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Ezra and Nehemiah give the same list of the families that came up from Babylon with Zerubbabel, but many of their numbers differ. “The children of Adonikam, six hundred sixty and six” (Ezra 2:13); “The children of Adonikam, six hundred threescore and seven” (Nehemiah 7:18). The children of Arah are “seven hundred seventy and five” in Ezra and “six hundred fifty and two” in Nehemiah (Ezra 2:5; Nehemiah 7:10), and so through the list, some more and some fewer. Yet both give the same total: “The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore” (Ezra 2:64; Nehemiah 7:66).

Preferred: The two lists were made at two times. Ezra’s is the list of “the children of the province that went up out of the captivity” (Ezra 2:1), as their names were given in at Babylon when they set out under the decree of Cyrus. Nehemiah’s is one he found nearly a century later, “a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first” (Nehemiah 7:5), which Gill takes to have been made when the company came to Jerusalem. Between the two, some who gave in their names stayed behind or died on the way, and others who hadn’t given them in followed and joined the company. So some families are more in Nehemiah and some fewer, as the singing men and women are (Ezra 2:65; Nehemiah 7:67).

The total is the same in both because it is the number of the whole congregation, counted as one company (Ezra 2:64), not the sum of the families: neither book says its families add up to it, and the congregation took in those who “could not shew their father’s house” (2:59) as well as the families listed.