Nehemiah 7:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And my God put into my heart, &c. Whatever good motion is put into our minds, we must acknowledge it to come from God; and even what is done by human prudence is to be ascribed to the direction of divine providence. To gather together the nobles and the rulers of the people Not only for the particular end here mentioned, but for divers other weighty purposes and matters, of which the following Chapter s treat. That they might be reckoned by genealogy In order that it might appear to what family each person belonged, and where their ancient habitations lay, which, for a great number of them, were in the city, the peopling of which was now his design. I found a register of them which came up at the first To wit, with Zerubbabel, as it follows, Nehemiah 7:7. But this following catalogue differs in some particulars from that in Ezra, chap. 2., of which see the notes there. The author of the Universal History observes, that though the genealogies had been once rectified, soo after the return, there were still many families of priests, Levites, and people, who could not make out their claim to their tribes. It is therefore likely that some of them were afterward enabled to do it, and were then inserted in this new register, together with those who came up with Nehemiah. Several of the old families, which came up on the first edict, might be, by this time, extinct, and these are the probable causes of the difference we find in the genealogies of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.