Biblion Bible Commentary
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Those Who Could Not Prove Their Fathers
Ezra 2:59-70
59 These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers’ houses and their offspring, whether they were of Israel: · WEB
Six hundred fifty-two people had no papers, and the ruling on the priests among them postpones the question rather than closing it.
These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses and their offspring, whether they were of Israel.
Six hundred fifty-two people are counted in this category. They made the journey. They are in the register. What they lack is documentation, and the register records the lack alongside their names rather than omitting them.
Then a harder case. Among them were priestly families, including the children of Barzillai, who took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name — a house that had taken its identity from a marriage, and could no longer produce its own line.
The outcome is stated flatly: these sought their place among those who were registered by genealogy, but they were not found; therefore they were deemed disqualified and removed from the priesthood.
The reason is not misconduct. Nothing is alleged against them, and the verse does not say they were not priests — it says the record was not found. A priesthood that handled the holy things on behalf of everyone else could not be staffed on an unverifiable claim, and the cost of that principle falls here on men who may well have been entitled.
And the ruling in verse 63 is more careful than it first appears. The governor told them that they should not eat of the most holy things until a priest stood up to serve with Urim and with Thummim.
That is a deferral, not a verdict. The question is left open pending a means of settling it that nobody present possessed — and since no such priest is recorded in the book, the postponement stood. They keep their place in the community and their names in the register; only the holiest portions are withheld, and the withholding is provisional.
The chapter then closes with totals — the whole assembly together was forty-two thousand three hundred sixty — servants, animals counted to the last donkey, a treasury gift according to their ability, and the plainest possible ending: all Israel in their cities.
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