Ezra 8

8 ¹These are the heads of their families, and the genealogy of those who came up with me from Babylon during King Artaxerxes' reign:

²From Phinehas's sons, Gershom; from Ithamar's sons, Daniel; from David's sons, Hattush.

³Of Shecaniah's sons; of Parosh's sons: Zechariah, with 150 males traced by genealogy.

⁴Of the sons of Pahath-moab, Eliehoenai the son of Zerahiah, and with him 200 males.

⁵Of the sons of Zattu, Shecaniah the son of Jahaziel, and with him 300 males.

⁶Of the sons of Adin, Ebed the son of Jonathan, and with him 50 males.

⁷Of the sons of Elam, Jeshaiah the son of Athaliah, and with him 70 males.

⁸Of the sons of Shephatiah, Zebadiah the son of Michael, and with him 80 males.

⁹Of the sons of Joab, Obadiah the son of Jehiel, and with him 218 males.

¹⁰Of the sons of Bani, Shelomith the son of Josiphiah, and with him 160 males.

¹¹Of the sons of Bebai, Zechariah the son of Bebai, and with him 28 males.

¹²Of the sons of Azgad, Johanan the son of Hakkatan, and with him 110 males.

¹³Adonikam's sons, the later ones—names: Eliphelet, Jeuel, Shemaiah—and 60 males with them.

¹⁴Of the sons of Bigvai, Uthai and Zaccur, and with them 70 males.

Ezra Seeks Ministers for the House

¹⁵I gathered them at the river flowing toward Ahava, and we camped there three days. Checking the people and priests, I found no sons of Levi there. ¹⁶Then I sent for leaders Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam, and for discerning men Joiarib and Elnathan. ¹⁷I sent them to Iddo, the leader at Casiphia, and told them what to say to him and his kin, the temple servants there, so they'd bring us ministers for our Father's house. ¹⁸By our Father's good hand on us, they brought us a discerning man from the sons of Mahli son of Levi son of Israel: Sherebiah, with his sons and brothers, eighteen. ¹⁹Hashabiah, and with him Jeshaiah from Merari's sons, with his brothers and their sons—twenty in all, ²⁰and 220 temple servants, whom David and the officials assigned to serve the Levites—all listed by name.

²¹So there, at the river Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, to humble ourselves before our Father and seek from him a safe path for us, our children, and all our goods. ²²I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the road, since we had told him, "The hand of our Father is on all who seek him for good, but his power and anger are against all who abandon him." ²³So we fasted and pleaded with our Father about this, and he listened to our prayer.

²⁴I set apart twelve leading priests—Sherebiah, Hashabiah—and ten of their brothers with them. ²⁵I weighed out to them the silver, gold, and vessels—the offering for our Father's house that the king, his counselors, his officials, and all Israel there had offered. ²⁶I weighed into their hands about 24 tons silver, silver vessels worth about 4 tons, gold about 4 tons, ²⁷20 gold basins worth 1,000 darics, and two vessels of fine, gleaming bronze, as precious as gold. ²⁸I said to them, "You are holy to our Father, and the vessels are holy, and the silver and gold are a voluntary offering to our Father, the God of your fathers. ²⁹Watch and guard them until you weigh them before the chief priests, the Levites, and the family heads of Israel at Jerusalem, in the chambers of our Father's house."

³⁰The priests and Levites took the weighed silver, gold, and vessels, to bring to Jerusalem, to the house of our Father.

³¹We set out from the river Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month for Jerusalem. The hand of our Father was on us, rescuing us from the enemy and from ambush along the way.

³²We came to Jerusalem and rested there three days. ³³On day four, silver, gold, and vessels were weighed in our Father's house and handed to Meremoth, priest son of Uriah, with Eleazar son of Phinehas beside him, and Levites Jozabad son of Jeshua and Noadiah son of Binnui beside them. ³⁴Everything was counted and weighed, and the full weight was recorded at that time.

³⁵Then the returned exiles offered burnt offerings to our Father, God of Israel: twelve bulls for all Israel, ninety-six rams, seventy-seven lambs, twelve male goats as a sin offering—all of it a burnt offering to our Father. ³⁶They also delivered the king's decrees to the king's satraps and to the governors of the province Beyond the River, and these supported the people and the house of our Father. ^a a v36 Beyond the River was the official Persian name for their province west of the Euphrates River.