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Ezra 2 · a question people ask

Is this the Nehemiah of the book of Nehemiah, and the Mordecai of Esther?

In the text

Ezra 2:2 gives only names: "Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai" and the rest (2:2). The book of Nehemiah begins, "The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah" (Nehemiah 1:1), and Esther names "a certain Jew in the citadel of Susa whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair" (Esther 2:5). Ezra 2:2 gives neither man a father, a place or anything else, so the text doesn't say whether they are the same men as those, and this study doesn't either.

The verses

“who came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, and Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel:”
Ezra 2:2 · World English Bible
“The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now in the month Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the palace,”
Nehemiah 1:1 · World English Bible
“There was a certain Jew in the citadel of Susa whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite,”
Esther 2:5 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Ezra 2

Ezra 2: Everyone to his city

Ezra 2 is more than a list: it names the returning people family by family and town by town, "everyone to his city" (2:1), still counts those who "could not show their fathers’ houses" (2:59), and ends with gifts "according to their ability" (2:69) for the LORD's house before it was rebuilt; Nehemiah 7 gives the list again, with the same total and some different details.

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions