Catholic Commentary
The Census of the Lay Families of Israel (Part 1)
8The children of Parosh: two thousand one hundred seventy-two.9The children of Shephatiah: three hundred seventy-two.10The children of Arah: six hundred fifty-two.11The children of Pahathmoab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab: two thousand eight hundred eighteen.12The children of Elam: one thousand two hundred fifty-four.13The children of Zattu: eight hundred forty-five.14The children of Zaccai: seven hundred sixty.15The children of Binnui: six hundred forty-eight.
Nehemiah 7:8–15 records the census of eight family clans returning from Babylonian exile, listing their sizes from 372 to 2,818 members. These enumerated families form a theological statement through their names and numbers, representing the restoration of Israel's community through judgment, purification, and rebuilding.
God does not deal in abstractions—He calls each name, counts each family, and restores each person as irreplaceably particular.
Commentary
Nehemiah 7:8 – The children of Parosh: 2,172. Parosh ("flea" in Hebrew) heads the list, and his clan is the largest in this first grouping. The same family appears in Ezra 2:3 with an identical count, lending the list archival credibility. Parosh's descendants were among those who had taken foreign wives and were called to repentance in Ezra 10:25, a detail that underscores that the families being numbered are not idealized; they are real, historically situated people with moral struggles—and still they are named and counted as part of the restored community.
Nehemiah 7:9 – The children of Shephatiah: 372. Shephatiah ("Yahweh judges") is a theophoric name whose very meaning places its bearers under divine governance. The smaller number relative to Parosh does not imply lesser dignity; the text treats all clans with equal seriousness.
Nehemiah 7:10 – The children of Arah: 652. Notably, the parallel in Ezra 2:5 gives Arah's number as 775. Scholars note that this discrepancy—along with several others in this chapter—suggests two distinct census moments, or variant transmission streams, rather than scribal error. The Catholic tradition, following St. Jerome's careful textual work in the Vulgate, does not require artificial harmonization; the text's integrity includes its human literary history.
Nehemiah 7:11 – The children of Pahath-moab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab: 2,818. This is the second-largest clan in the passage. The double designation ("of the children of Jeshua and Joab") signals that two sub-clans merged under the larger ancestral heading of Pahath-moab ("governor of Moab"), possibly indicating a family of administrative descent from Moabite territory. The name Jeshua within a clan name anticipates the great Jeshua/Joshua who leads the priestly community alongside Zerubbabel (Neh 7:7); the name reverberates with the saving work of God.
Nehemiah 7:12 – The children of Elam: 1,254. A second clan named Elam appears later at verse 34 with the same number (1,254), suggesting either a large family divided into two branches or a scribal duplication. Elam is a geographic name (a region east of Babylon), implying that this family's ancestors may have been exiled into that territory and returned. Their restoration from the far east of the empire is a small but resonant echo of the great Isaian vision of exiles gathered "from the east and from the west" (Isa 43:5).
Nehemiah 7:13 – The children of Zattu: 845. Zattu appears in Ezra 10:27 among those who put away foreign wives. Again, the census does not whitewash the community. These families carry both their failures and their conversions into the re-constituted Israel.
Nehemiah 7:14 – The children of Zaccai: 760. Zaccai ("pure" or "innocent" in Hebrew) is listed only here and in Ezra 2:9. The name's meaning carries a gentle irony: the whole returning community is in the process of being purified, made "Zaccai," through the disciplines of the restoration project—law, worship, and communal accountability.
Nehemiah 7:15 – The children of Binnui: 648. Binnui ("built up") closes this first grouping with a name that is itself a theological statement about the entire enterprise. The community is being "built up"—precisely the purpose of the wall-building and the census that frames it.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses: Reading with the fourfold sense championed by Origen, John Cassian, and systematized by St. Thomas Aquinas, the literal list of names and numbers opens onto deeper meanings. Allegorically, the enumerated clans represent the Church: not an abstraction, but a communion of named, particular persons whom God knows individually. The anagogical sense points toward the heavenly register—the Book of Life (Rev 20:12)—of which every earthly census is a faint type. The moral (tropological) sense calls each reader to examine whether they, too, are numbered among those who returned and rebuilt, or among those who stayed in the comfort of Babylon.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic theology insists that the Church is not merely a spiritual idea but a concrete, embodied, historically particular communion of persons. This list of families in Nehemiah 7 is a scriptural icon of that conviction. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God "calls each one by name" (CCC §203, echoing Isa 43:1), and this census enacts exactly that truth: every clan, however small, is individually named before God and before the community.
St. Augustine, in De Civitate Dei (Book XVIII), reflects on how God preserves within history a "City of God" whose members are known to Him even when hidden among the nations. The returning exiles, carefully numbered here, are precisely such a preserved remnant—what Paul in Romans 11:5 calls a "remnant chosen by grace."
The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§9) describes the Church as the "new People of God," a concept with deep roots in the Old Testament assembly (qahal) of Israel. Nehemiah's census is a formal reconstitution of the qahal: it establishes legal and spiritual membership in the restored community. The act of being numbered is not bureaucratic but covenantal—it mirrors the way baptismal registration in the Church is simultaneously a civil record and a participation in the divine act of naming.
Pope Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth, observed that the Bible's concern for names and numbers reflects a theology of the individual: "The individual is not lost in the mass." These eight verses are a quiet but powerful assertion of that truth. Each family—Parosh, Shephatiah, Arah, Pahath-moab, Elam, Zattu, Zaccai, Binnui—bears a unique history, a unique set of struggles, and a unique share in the covenant promise of restoration.
For Today
Contemporary Catholics can be tempted to experience the Church as a faceless institution rather than a community in which they are personally known. These eight verses offer a direct counter-witness. Consider: your name is in your parish baptismal register. You are numbered among those who returned. The practical invitation of this passage is threefold. First, learn the names of those around you at Mass—just as these clans are named, not anonymous. Second, examine honestly whether you have "stayed in Babylon"—whether comfort, cultural assimilation, or spiritual laziness has kept you from fully investing in the rebuilding of the Church's life in your community. Third, take seriously the communal dimension of faith: the families here are counted as families. Nehemiah's vision is not of isolated believers but of households ordered toward God. Parents might ask: is my household a named, counted participant in the life of the parish, or a passive observer? The census is an invitation to claim your place in the roll-call of the restored people of God.
Cross-References