The designations "sons of"and "men of"in these verses point out the two ways whereby the exiles demonstrated their Jewish ancestry: by family genealogy or by residence in Palestine. Few of the returning exiles had personally lived in the Promised Land, but many could give evidence that their ancestors had lived in a particular town and or had owned property there.
"It was not considered a compromise of one's Jewish identity to give a child a name which was not Yahwistic, nor even of Hebrew or Aramaic stock."42
Scholars have explained the many differences in numbers in this list compared with the one in Nehemiah 7:7-66 several ways43Hebrew writers represented numbers by using certain words that had other meanings. This has resulted in some confusion in interpretation.44Perhaps the translators misunderstood the numbers the writer intended.45Maybe this list contains rough estimates and the later list in Nehemiah has the true figures.46
