1:11 All these gold and silver vessels totaled 5,400. 1 Sheshbazzar brought them all along when the captives were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.
6:1 So Darius the king issued orders, and they searched in the archives 3 of the treasury which were deposited there in Babylon.
8:1 These are the leaders 4 and those enrolled with them by genealogy who were coming up with me from Babylon during the reign of King Artaxerxes:
1 sn The total number as given in the MT does not match the numbers given for the various items in v. 9. It is not clear whether the difference is due to error in textual transmission or whether the constituent items mentioned are only a selection from a longer list, in which case the total from that longer list may have been retained. The numbers provided in 1 Esdras come much closer to agreeing with the number in Ezra 1:9-11, but this does not necessarily mean that 1 Esdras has been better preserved here than Ezra. 1 Esdras 2:13-15 (RSV) says, “The number of these was: a thousand gold cups, a thousand silver cups, twenty-nine silver censures, thirty gold bowls, two thousand four hundred and ten silver bowls, and a thousand other vessels. All the vessels were handed over, gold and silver, five thousand four hundred and sixty-nine, and they were carried back by Shesbazzar with the returning exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem.”
2 sn Cyrus was actually a Persian king, but when he conquered Babylon in 539
3 tn Aram “the house of the archives.”
4 tn Heb “the heads of their families.”