After we finished building the wall and put the doors in the gates, we chose the men who would guard the gates and the men to sing in the Temple and help the priests.
Next, I put my brother Hanani in charge of Jerusalem. I chose another man named Hananiah to be the commander of the fort. I picked Hanani because he was a very honest man and he feared God more than most people do.
Then I said to Hanani and Hananiah, "Each day you must wait until the sun has been up for several hours before you open the gates of Jerusalem. You must shut and lock the gates before the sun goes down. Also choose people who live in Jerusalem as guards. Put some of them at special places to guard the city, and put the other people near their own houses."
So my God put it in my heart to have all the people meet together. I called together all the important people, the officials, and the common people. I did this so that I could make a list of all the families. I found the family lists of the people who had been the first to return from captivity. This is what I found written there:
These are the people of the province who came back from captivity. In the past, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took them as prisoners to Babylon. These people came back to Jerusalem and Judah. They all went to their own towns.
They returned with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai, Nehum, and Baanah. This is the list of names and numbers of men from Israel who came back:
Some people came to Jerusalem from these towns of Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Kerub, Addon, and Immer. But these people could not prove that their families really came from the Israelites:
From the family of priests there were the descendants of: Hobaiah, Hakkoz, and Barzillai (If a man married a daughter of Barzillai from Gilead, he was counted as a descendant of Barzillai.)
These people searched for their family histories, but they could not find them. They could not prove that their ancestors were priests, so they could serve as priests. Their names were not included in the list of priests.
All together, there were 42,360 people in the group who came back. This is not counting their 7337 men and women slaves. They also had 245 men and women singers with them.
Some of the family leaders gave money to support the work. The governor gave 19 pounds of gold to the treasury. He also gave 50 bowls and 530 pieces of clothing for the priests.
So the priests, the people from the tribe of Levi, the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Temple servants settled down in their own towns. And all the other Israelites settled down in their own towns. By the seventh month of the year, all the Israelites had settled down in their own towns.