Ezra 2:69 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Threescore and one thousand drachms of gold, &c. About seventy-five thousand and five hundred pounds of our money; for every drachm of gold is worth ten shillings of our money, and every mina, or pound of silver, nine pounds; for it contains sixty shekels, and every shekel of silver is worth three shillings of our money. And one hundred priests' garments Garments, as well as gold and silver, were wont to be laid up in treasuries, Matthew 6:20. We may infer then, from these rich offerings, not only, as has been just intimated, that the Jews were not made such poor slaves in Babylon as wrought for their lords and masters, but that there may not be all the truth imaginable in that common saying among them, that they were only the bran, that is, the dregs of the people, who returned to Jerusalem at the end of the captivity, and that all the fine flour stayed behind at Babylon. See Prideaux's Connect., Ann. 536, and Dodd.