Now these are the children of the province that went up out of the captivity, of those which had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away unto Babylon, and came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city;
Children of the province - i:e., Judea (Ezra 5:8), so called as being now reduced from an illustrious, independent, and powerful kingdom to an obscure, servile, tributary province of the Persian empire. This name is applied by the sacred historian to intimate that the Jewish exiles, though now released from captivity and allowed to return into their own land, were still the subjects of Cyrus, inhabiting a province dependent upon Persia х bªneey (H1121) hamªdiynaah (H4082), sons of the province] - i:e., according to Gesenius, Israelite exiles dwelling in the Persian provinces, Medinah meaning a province or district, or satrapy, under the jurisdiction of a Persian prefect or viceroy (Nehemiah 7:6; Esth. 1:23; 12:12,14; Daniel 8:2).
Those which had been carried away - i:e., the descendants, including children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away unto Babylon. Those who are mentioned in the following catalogue, then, were not the ten tribes, who were dispersed into various and scattered districts of Assyria, but the Jewish exiles resident in or around Babylon. Zerubbabel, the prince of Judah, himself resided there; and there flocked around his standard those Jews who formed the first caravan, comprising chiefly or exclusively those of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin who took the initiative in the journey to the land of their fathers, both from their location in Babylon, and from their greater interest in the work of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple.
Came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city - either the city that had been occupied by his ancestors, or, as most parts of Judea were then either desolate or possessed by others, the city that was rebuilt and allotted to him now.