Ezra 7:7 - Exposition

The same six classes are here mentioned as furnishing colonists under Ezra which, according to the earlier narrative ( Ezra 2:70 ), had accompanied Zerubbabel. The order in which the classes are mentioned is nearly, but not quite, the same. In the seventh year of Artaxerxes. This is the emphatic clause of the verse; Ezra's main object in the section being to give the exact date of his journey. As Artaxerxes began to reign in b.c. 464, his seventh year would be b.c. 458.