Ezra 2 Bible study: Everyone to his city

The chapter opens: "Now these are the children of the province who went up out of the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city" (2:1). Province is the Hebrew medinah (tap province), which Brown-Driver-Briggs gives simply as "province". In the Hebrew of Ezra it comes only here. Lamentations used the word in its first verse: "She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave!" (Lamentations 1:1). Cyrus's decree had named the place they were going: "Jerusalem, which is in Judah" (1:3). The chapter begins with each one going "to his city" (2:1), and it ends the same way: "all Israel in their cities" (2:70).

Ezra 2:2→leads toLuke 3:27

Ezra 2 names Zerubbabel first among those the people "came with" (2:2), without his father's name; the next chapter calls him "Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel" (3:2). Luke's list of Jesus' ancestors begins, "Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph" (Luke 3:23), and runs back through "the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri" (Luke 3:27). 1 Chronicles has "The sons of Pedaiah: Zerubbabel and Shimei" (1 Chronicles 3:19); 1 Chronicles 3's honest question sets these verses side by side, and the Bible doesn't explain the difference. Luke doesn't name Ezra.

מְדִינָהmedinahsay me-dee-NAH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "province". Strong's: "properly, a judgeship, i.e. jurisdiction; by implication, a district (as ruled by a judge); generally, a region". The returning people are "the children of the province" (2:1). In the Hebrew of Ezra it comes only here; the Aramaic letter of chapter 5 has its own word, Strong's H4083, in "we went into the province of Judah" (5:8). It comes 53 times in the Hebrew Bible, 39 of them in Esther. Nehemiah uses it too: "The remnant who are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach" (Nehemiah 1:3), and his copy of the list begins, "These are the children of the province" (Nehemiah 7:6). Lamentations has it in its first verse: "She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave!" (Lamentations 1:1).