The mention of the king’s seven counselors presents Ezra’s mission as an officially authorized Persian commission, not as a private religious journey. The Aramaic clause describes Ezra as “sent” (shĕliaḥ), a passive participle functioning predicatively: he has been dispatched “from before” (min-qodam), that is, under the authority of, the king and his seven advisers. The subsequent infinitive, “to inquire” (lĕbaqqār, Piel infinitive of bĕqar), states the stated purpose of that authorization: an official examination concerning Judah and Jerusalem in relation to the law of Ezra’s God. The expression “seven counselors” (šibʿat yāʿăṭôhî) is consistent with the Persian imperial setting. The participial noun yāʿăṭ, “adviser” or “counselor,” denotes members of the royal advisory circle, while the number seven corresponds with the prominence of seven leading Persian officials in Esther 1:14. Ezra 7:14 does not provide their names or establish that they held precisely the same offices as the seven princes in Esther; nevertheless, both passages reflect the courtly reality that the Persian monarch governed with a restricted body of eminent counselors. Their inclusion gives the decree broader court sanction. This corporate authorization also explains why the inquiry concerns public conditions in Judah and Jerusalem. The Persian court does not surrender its sovereignty to Ezra, nor does it adjudicate the content of Israel’s Torah. Rather, it commissions Ezra, whose competence in “the law of your God” has already been established in 7:6 and 7:10, to investigate whether the Judean community is ordered according to that law. The king’s authority and Ezra’s Torah expertise thus operate on distinct levels within the decree: the former sends and protects the envoy, while the latter supplies the norm by which Judah and Jerusalem are to be examined.

The expression “who among you, from all his people” restricts the summons to those who belong to the LORD’s people, Israel, though it is proclaimed publicly throughout Cyrus’s realm. The interrogative מִי (mi, “who?”) introduces an invitation for volunteers, while בָּכֶם (bakem, “among you”) addresses the decree’s hearers generally and מִכָּל־עַמּוֹ (mikkol-‘ammo, “from all his people”) identifies the group from whom such volunteers may come. The suffix on ‘ammo refers most naturally to the God just named in the blessing, “may his God be with him.” Thus the decree concerns dispersed Israelites rather than a general authorization for Persian subjects or Gentile devotees to establish a new cult in Jerusalem. The immediate context confirms this limitation. Ezra 1:2 identifies the commissioned task as building a house for the LORD, “the God of heaven,” and 1:3 calls that deity “the LORD, the God of Israel.” Verse 4 then directs residents of every place where “he” remains to support the returning party materially, distinguishing those who go up from surrounding populations who assist them. Ezra 1:5 records the actual response in terms of the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, together with priests and Levites, whose spirits God stirred to return. The decree therefore gathers the covenant people from the diaspora for restoration in Judah, while allowing and indeed requiring broader imperial society to furnish support. The phrase does not imply that every Israelite was commanded to leave Babylon under penalty, since the jussives יְהִי (yehi, “may he be”) and יַעַל (ya‘al, “let him go up”) frame the proclamation as an authorized summons accompanied by benediction. Yet it is more than a bare permission: Cyrus publicly recognizes a particular people as belonging to the God who has charged him with rebuilding the temple, and he authorizes members of that people to return for that purpose. The subsequent narrative presents the return as God’s work through those whose hearts he awakened, corresponding the imperial edict to the divine purpose announced in Ezra 1:1.

The reference to Zadok identifies Ezra with the legitimate Aaronic priesthood as represented by the Zadokite line, but it does not designate Ezra himself as high priest. The chain of construct nouns, ben (“son of”), places Shallum, Zadok, and Ahitub within Ezra’s paternal priestly descent; in the larger genealogy it culminates in Aaron (7:5). Zadok’s name is particularly significant because Scripture associates his house with the established priesthood after the removal of Abiathar under Solomon (1 Kgs 2:26-27, 35), a development linked with the judgment previously pronounced against Eli’s house. Thus Ezra’s ancestry is presented as covenantally and institutionally valid, rather than as an undifferentiated Levitical pedigree. The same succession appears in the priestly genealogy of 1 Chronicles 6:12, where Shallum is named as Zadok’s descendant and Ahitub as Zadok’s father. Ezra 7 therefore deliberately locates the scribe-priest within the line recognized in Israel’s historical records. Yet neither this verse nor the ensuing narrative supplies the title “high priest” for Ezra. The narrative calls him “Ezra the priest, the scribe” (7:11), and his authority to teach the Law rests on both his priestly lineage and his mastery of the Torah. Zadok’s inclusion accordingly substantiates Ezra’s priestly legitimacy and the continuity of the restored community with the preexilic priesthood, without elevating Ezra to the high-priestly office.

The plural דָּתֵי (datê, “decrees” or “laws”), though Ezra 7 preserves a single royal letter, characterizes the authorization as a body of binding imperial directives rather than as private correspondence. The term דָּת (dat), a Persian administrative loanword, denotes an authoritative legal enactment. Its plural construct form, “decrees of the king,” appropriately embraces the several provisions contained in Artaxerxes’s written commission: the authorization of the returnees and their gifts (7:13-20), the treasury officials’ obligations (7:21-23), the tax exemption for temple personnel (7:24), and Ezra’s judicial and instructional authority (7:25-26). The letter is therefore one documentary instrument containing multiple royal ordinances. The plural may also imply that the travelers bore official copies or accompanying orders for distribution among the relevant Persian officers. The immediate statement that these decrees were given to the king’s satraps and governors beyond the River indicates that the royal authorization had to be formally communicated within the western imperial administration. Ezra 7:21 had specifically addressed treasurers “beyond the River,” while 8:36 broadens the recipients to include the administrative authorities who could implement the king’s provisions. The wording thus presents the decree as public imperial legislation, whose various commands secured practical support for both the restored community and the Jerusalem temple.

The identical figure in Ezra 2:38 and Nehemiah 7:41 is best explained by their dependence upon the same early returnee register. Nehemiah explicitly introduces his list as a genealogical record of those who "came up at the first" (Neh. 7:5), rather than as a census conducted in Nehemiah's own day. Ezra 2 likewise presents the constituent families of the postexilic community that returned from Babylon. Thus the 1,247 Pashhurites belong to the foundational restoration community, even though Nehemiah later employed the record for the ordering of Jerusalem. The expression bnea Pashhur, "sons of Pashhur," identifies a priestly paternal house, since it occurs within the priestly section of Ezra 2:36-39. The masculine numeral sequence, eleph m
tayim arbaim wshibah, gives the total as one thousand two hundred forty-seven members registered under that ancestral designation. Exact agreement at this point does not require that every entry in Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 survived without variation, for the parallel lists contain several differing totals elsewhere. It does indicate, however, that the Pashhurite figure was stably preserved in the transmitted register and that both books regard this priestly family as an authenticated component of the restored community.

Ezra’s first-person plural confession expresses covenantal solidarity and priestly representation, not an assertion that he personally contracted a prohibited marriage. Although the report of Ezra 9:1–2 identifies “the people of Israel, and the priests and the Levites,” with officials and rulers prominent in the trespass, Ezra approaches God as a member and representative of the restored covenant community. The perfect עָזַבְנוּ (ʿazabnu, “we have forsaken”) acknowledges a completed and culpable act of abandonment. He does not distance himself from the guilty by saying “they have forsaken,” because Israel’s sin has corporate covenantal consequences before the God who restored the whole remnant. This corporate language accords with the prayer’s movement from Ezra’s identification with Israel’s historic guilt in vv. 6–7 to the present offense that threatens the mercy recently shown in vv. 8–9. Ezra had himself received God’s preservation and favor as part of the returned remnant; therefore the community’s repudiation of divine commands is confessed as “our” sin. Such identification does not erase distinctions of individual responsibility, since the narrative later requires particular offenders to address their unlawful unions (10:10–17). It does, however, reflect the biblical reality that the covenant people stand before God as a people, and that their leaders, especially priests and Levites, bear heightened responsibility when they participate in covenant violation. The “commandments” (מִצְוֹתֶיךָ, miṣwōteka, “your commandments”) are then specified in vv. 11–12 through the prophetic instruction concerning separation from the abominable practices of the land and marriage alliances that would draw Israel into them. Ezra thus treats the intermarriages as a conscious abandonment of revealed covenant obligations, not as a socially unfortunate irregularity. His plural confession gives theological expression to the gravity of the offense: the remnant’s conduct imperils the community that God had mercifully reestablished after exile.

Ezra 4:7 gives a summary identification of the opposition responsible for initiating the appeal, whereas vv. 8-9 identify the officials who formally composed and transmitted it. Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and their associates are presented as the party whose complaint reached Artaxerxes; Rehum the commander and Shimshai the scribe are then named as the administrative agents through whom that complaint was set into official epistolary form. The two statements are therefore complementary rather than contradictory. The singular perfect כתב (katab, "he wrote") precedes a compound subject, Bishlam, Mithredath, Tabeel, and their associates. Such singular verbal agreement can treat the group as a corporate body. Verse 8 narrows the description: Rehum and Shimshai "wrote a letter against Jerusalem," and v. 9 expands the circle of associated officials and peoples represented in the petition. Shimshai's designation as ספרא (saprāʾ, "scribe") particularly suits his role in preparing the document, while Rehum's title בעל טעם (beʿēl teʿēm, commonly rendered "commander") marks him as an official capable of submitting an accusation to the imperial court. The narrative thus depicts a coordinated opposition rather than competing accounts of authorship. Local adversaries supplied the complaint and stood behind it, but Persian provincial administrators gave it the form, authority, and channels required for a royal response. This distinction also prepares for the letter's argument in vv. 12-16, where local hostility is expressed in the language of imperial security and revenue.

“The sons of Bani” designates a recognized ancestral house or clan within the postexilic community, rather than asserting that 642 men were Bani’s immediate biological sons. The construct expression בְּנֵי בָנִי (bĕnê Bānî), literally “sons of Bani,” is the regular form used throughout Ezra 2 to identify returnees by descent-group. In such registers, בֵּן (bēn, “son”) can denote a descendant, member of a household, or representative of an ancestral line. The number therefore counts the male members, or perhaps the officially enrolled adult males, attached to the Bani lineage in the returning community. This usage accords with the structure of Ezra 2. The list moves among families identified by personal ancestors, inhabitants identified by towns, and priestly and Levitical houses. Its concern is not a complete census of every woman and child, but the restoration of identifiable Israelite families and offices in Judah. The subsequent total of the whole assembly (2:64), together with the separate enumeration of servants and animals (2:65-67), confirms the administrative character of the register. Bani’s descendants thus appear as a substantial lay family whose recognized genealogical identity secured its place among those returning to Jerusalem and Judah.

The twelve bulls signify that the returned exiles understood their worship as representing covenant Israel in its entirety. The phrase עַל־כָּל־יִשְׂרָאֵל (ʿal-kol yiśrāʾēl), “for all Israel,” identifies the sacrificial beneficiaries rather than supplying a census of those physically present. The preposition ʿal can carry the sense of action on behalf of a person or group. Twelve, correspondingly, is the conventional number of Israel’s tribes. The offering therefore confesses that the community restored from Babylon remained the lawful heir and representative of the whole people to whom the Lord had bound himself. This claim does not require that every tribe had returned to Judah in equal numbers. Ezra elsewhere speaks principally of Judah, Benjamin, priests, Levites, and other families connected with the former southern kingdom; nevertheless, the designation “Israel” preserves the unity of the people formed by the covenant. The twelve male goats “for a sin offering” immediately following the bulls reinforce the same representative scope. Ezra 6:17 similarly records twelve goats for the sin offering at the dedication of the rebuilt temple. By combining sacrifices expressive of consecration, עֹלָה (ʿōlâ), with a corporate sin offering, חַטָּאת (ḥaṭṭāʾt), the narrative presents the returning community before the God of Israel as a restored Israel, dependent upon atonement and wholly devoted to the Lord.

The sons of Henadad are best understood as an additional Levitical family included with Jeshua, Kadmiel, and their respective households in overseeing the work. The clause beginning בְּנֵי חֵנָדָד (bene Ḥenadad, “sons of Henadad”) has no new finite verb, but Biblical Hebrew readily continues a preceding subject by an asyndetic nominal addition. Thus the sense is that Jeshua and Kadmiel stood together for supervision, along with the sons of Henadad and their households. The suffixes in בְּנֵיהֶם וַאֲחֵיהֶם (benehem waʾăḥêhem, “their sons and their brothers”) are masculine plural and most naturally take “sons of Henadad” as their immediate antecedent. The concluding הַלְוִיִּם (halewiyyim, “the Levites”) appositionally identifies this Henadadite group as Levites and, in the wider syntax, characterizes the personnel entrusted with supervision. Their task is expressed by the Piel infinitive לְנַצֵּחַ (lenaṣṣēaḥ), “to direct” or “to supervise,” governing the workers, literally “those doing the work,” in the house of God. This reading accounts for the verse's compressed list without making Henadad the father of Jeshua or Kadmiel, or reducing the final words to a detached explanatory gloss. The narrative presents a coordinated Levitical supervisory body composed of recognized family groups. The singular verb וַיַּעֲמֹד (wayyaʿămōd, “he stood”) initially names Jeshua as the leading figure, while the ensuing plural relatives and clans expand the collective body acting “as one” (כְּאֶחָד, keʾeḥad).

The verb “alter” refers principally to tampering with Darius’s edict, not to every possible physical modification of the temple. The preceding verse has already stipulated a civil penalty for “anyone who changes this edict” (6:11), and 6:12 resumes that concern in a more expansive curse. The infinitive הַשְׁנָיָה (haššĕnāyâ), from the Haphʿel of שְׁנָה (šĕnāh, “change, alter”), can take the royal command as its understood object from v. 11. Thus the sense is that God will overthrow any ruler or people who puts forth a hand to alter the decree with the aim of bringing about the temple’s ruin. The idiom יִשְׁלַח יְדֵהּ (yišlaḥ yĕdēh, literally, “sends his hand”) denotes active intervention or an attempt to accomplish something, rather than a literal gesture. The following infinitives, לְהַשְׁנָיָה (“to alter”) and לְחַבָּלָה (leḥabbālāh, “to destroy,” Piel infinitive of חבל, ḥbl), define the hostile action and its intended end. “This house” is the direct object most immediately associated with “destroy,” though it is also the institution protected by the unalterable decree. The wording therefore does not forbid subsequent lawful repairs, liturgical arrangements, or other changes within the temple’s proper administration. It condemns the revocation or manipulation of imperial authorization in order to damage or abolish the Jerusalem temple. Darius’s threat joins his own juridical authority to the invoked judgment of Israel’s God. The Piel imperfect יְמַגַּר (yĕmaggar, “may he overthrow”) functions as a maledictory petition: the God associated with Jerusalem is called upon to depose every king or people attempting such an act. The royal decree thereby presents interference with the restored temple as rebellion against both Persian policy and the divine authority under whose protection the sanctuary stands.

The demonstrative זֹאת (zōʾt, “this”) refers immediately to “our guilt” (בְּאַשְׁמָתֵינוּ, beʾašmātênû), while that guilt encompasses the particular covenant breach that has prompted Ezra’s prayer, namely the community’s intermarriage with the surrounding peoples (9:1-2, 10-14). The feminine singular demonstrative agrees naturally with the feminine singular noun אַשְׁמָה (ʾašmâ), “guilt” or “culpability,” though the noun bears a first-person plural suffix. Ezra therefore gathers the present offense together with the nation’s longstanding unfaithfulness into a single prosecuting reality before God. The expression “there is no standing before you” employs עָמַד (ʿāmad) in the Qal infinitive construct, לַעֲמֹד (laʿămōd), following the negative existential אֵין (ʾên). It denotes inability to remain before God as one who can endure judgment or claim vindication. The phrase is not contradicted by Ezra’s physical posture in prayer, since he has in fact risen and spread out his hands before the LORD (9:5). His point is judicial and covenantal: Israel possesses no defensible standing before the holy God on the basis of its conduct. The preposition עַל (ʿal), “on account of,” gives the ground for this incapacity, identifying their guilt as the reason that they cannot present themselves as innocent or entitled to preservation. This confession completes the prayer’s logic. The returned exiles are a remnant only because God has shown undeserved mercy, not because their survival demonstrates their righteousness. Ezra does not deny the reality of divine grace, but he refuses to convert that grace into an argument that the community may continue in its sin without judgment. Their existence before God rests wholly upon his mercy, while their guilt, especially in renewing the very corruptions that brought exile, leaves them without any plea drawn from themselves.

The first plural refers to Tattenai and the Persian officials introduced in 5:3, whereas the final plural is most naturally understood in an administrative, effectively impersonal sense: a written reply was to be returned from the royal process after Darius received the report. The negated Piel perfect, לָא בַטִּלוּ (laʾ baṭṭîlû), means that the officials did not cause the Judean elders to cease their work. It does not imply that the opposition approved the rebuilding. Rather, they investigated the matter, recorded the Jews’ answer (5:9-17), and deferred a definitive interruption until the king’s decision could be obtained. The clause concerning God’s eye interprets this restraint as providential. עֵין אֱלָהֲהֹם (ʿên ʾĕlāhăhôm), "the eye of their God," is an anthropomorphic expression for God’s attentive, favorable oversight; the feminine singular verb הֲוָת (hawāt) agrees with the feminine noun "eye." The officials’ inability or unwillingness to halt the work during the inquiry is therefore presented as the effect of God’s sovereign care over the elders. The later verbs are imperfects, יְהָךְ (yehāk, "should go") and יְתִיבוּן (yetîbûn, "should return"), describing the anticipated procedure: a report would go before Darius, and an official written response, a נִשְׁתְּוָנָא (ništewānāʾ), would then be issued concerning the case. Chapter 6 identifies that response with Darius’s decree, which confirms the rebuilding rather than suppressing it.

The term dikhrown (דִּכְרוֹנָה, "memorandum," "record," or "remembrance") identifies the scroll as an official archival record of Cyrus’s decree, not as an informal note distinct from the decree itself. The following words, “Cyrus the king: a decree” (v. 3), supply the document’s substantive heading and content. Thus the scroll could be classified administratively as a dikhrown while preserving the wording or authorized summary of a royal edict. The Aramaic syntax supports this reading. The passive כְּתִיב (ketib, Qal passive perfect, “it was written”) introduces what was found “within it” (בְּגַוַּהּ, begawwah), and dikhrown functions as the designation attached to the ensuing text: “thus it was written in it: a record.” In Persian-period administrative usage, such a record would serve as documentary evidence retained in the royal archive. Its discovery therefore answers Darius’s inquiry in 5:17 and provides the legal basis for his confirming the rebuilding authorization in 6:6-12. “Memorandum” is a possible rendering, but “official record” better conveys the word’s function in this context, since the document bears royal authority and concerns imperial authorization, financing, and cultic provisions.

The phrase describes a corporate act of humbling before God through fasting, rather than an explicit confession of a particular transgression. The Hithpael infinitive לְהִתְעַנּוֹת (lehitʿannot), from ענה (ʿnh, “to afflict, humble”), states the purpose of Ezra’s proclaimed צום (ṣôm, “fast”): the assembled returnees deprived themselves in acknowledgment of their dependence upon God and in earnest petition for his care. In Israel’s cultic vocabulary, self-affliction could accompany penitence, as in the Day of Atonement legislation, but its meaning was not limited to mourning for a specified sin. It expressed lowliness before the divine presence and earnest seeking of divine favor. The immediate narrative favors this broader sense. Ezra has proclaimed publicly that “the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him” (8:22), and he has declined a royal military escort lest his request contradict that confession. The fast therefore gives embodied expression to the dependence asserted in v. 22: the community seeks from God what it will not secure by appealing to Persian force. The words “before our God” identify the fast as an act performed under God’s searching presence, while “to seek from him” explains its petitionary aim. Later in Ezra 9, Ezra’s grief over intermarriage includes explicit confession of Israel’s guilt; no comparable sin is named in 8:21. The self-affliction here may retain the ordinary penitential awareness appropriate to a covenant people, yet the verse chiefly presents it as communal humility and supplication for God’s preserving guidance.

Lišrōšî (לִשְׁרֹשִׁי) denotes removal from one’s established place, most plausibly banishment or deportation. The term is rare, and its precise derivation is debated, but it is naturally connected with the Semitic root šrš, “to root.” In a judicial setting, the image signifies being uprooted from one’s community or land. The ancient and traditional rendering “banishment” therefore expresses the sense better than an abstract translation such as “uprooting.” Its position within the penalty list confirms that it is a sanction distinct from execution. The repeated hēn, “whether,” introduces alternatives: death, banishment, confiscation of property (ʿănāš neḵsîn), or imprisonment (ʾesûrîn). The following conjunction before imprisonment does not convert the last two penalties into a required combination; the whole sequence catalogs punishments available to the authorities charged with enforcing the decree. Banishment would have been a severe but lesser penalty than death, depriving an offender of residence, social standing, and ordinary protection within the province, while confiscation and imprisonment supplied other graduated forms of royal coercion. In the immediate context, the sanctions enforce obedience to the legal order Ezra was commissioned to teach and administer (vv. 25–26).

The fifty-two are best understood as the registered male members, probably adult males, of the returnee group designated "the sons of Nebo," rather than as the entire population of that group including women, children, and dependents. The construct plural בְּנֵי (benê, “sons of”) is a conventional genealogical and communal heading in this register; it identifies the body being counted, while חֲמִשִּׁים וּשְׁנַיִם (“fifty-two”) supplies its official total. The bare cardinal expression does not itself specify age or sex, but the character of Ezra 2 as a restoration register favors a count of recognized household representatives or able male members. This conclusion is supported by the relation between the itemized totals and Ezra 2:64. The listed figures in the Masoretic Text amount to substantially fewer persons than the congregation’s total of 42,360, a difference that naturally allows for women, children, and others not represented in each family total, although textual and administrative complexities may also be involved. The number in v. 29 should therefore not be expanded into a demographic statement that Nebo contained only fifty-two persons. It records the officially enumerated contingent under this ancestral or local designation, whose return established Nebo’s place within the restored Judean community.

“This house” identifies the temple under construction as the legitimate continuation of the sanctuary Nebuchadnezzar destroyed, rather than asserting that the same physical structure had survived the exile. The Aramaic expression בַיְתָא דְנָה (baytāʾ denāʾ), “this house,” combines the determined noun “house” with a demonstrative and naturally points, in the elders’ present setting, to the temple project about which Tattenai has inquired (5:3, 9). Yet the following verb, סַתְרֵהּ (satrēh), a Qal perfect, “he destroyed it,” refers historically to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Solomon’s temple in 586 BC. The elders therefore speak in terms of cultic and covenantal continuity. The temple is not defined merely by its original stones and timbers, but by its identity as the appointed house of the God of heaven at Jerusalem. This continuity is reinforced immediately in 5:13, where Cyrus is said to have issued a decree “to rebuild this house of God.” Cyrus did not restore the ruined building intact; he authorized the rebuilding of the same temple institution after its judgment and desolation. The language coheres with the postexilic prophetic presentation of the rebuilt sanctuary as the Lord’s house, even though its visible splendor was inferior to the former house (Hag 2:3). The phrase also serves the elders’ legal argument before Persian authorities. Their work is not the establishment of a novel shrine, but the restoration of a sanctuary formerly recognized, destroyed in the Babylonian conquest, and subsequently authorized by Cyrus. The demonstrative thus joins the temple presently before the officials to its preexilic predecessor, while the narrative carefully distinguishes destruction under Nebuchadnezzar from rebuilding under Persian imperial decree.

The man named here is not the eighth-century prophet Isaiah, though his name is closely related to the prophet’s name. The Hebrew reads יְשַׁעְיָה (Yĕšaʿyâ, “Jeshaiah”), a proper name containing the shortened divine element Yah and expressing the confession that Yahweh saves. The prophet’s name is ordinarily written יְשַׁעְיָהוּ (Yĕšaʿyāhû, “Isaiah”), with the fuller theophoric ending. Rendering both forms as “Isaiah” is linguistically possible in a broad sense, since the names are cognate and bear essentially the same meaning, but it obscures the distinction preserved by the Hebrew text and by the usual English biblical naming convention. The context decisively distinguishes Ezra’s Jeshaiah from the canonical prophet. This Jeshaiah is identified as “son of Athaliah” and as a leading representative from the sons of Elam, whereas the prophet is consistently designated “son of Amoz” (Isa 1:1). Moreover, Ezra 8 records the company accompanying Ezra from Babylonia in the postexilic period, long after Isaiah’s prophetic ministry in the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The shared name therefore reflects a common Israelite theophoric naming pattern, not personal identity or an implied connection with the book of Isaiah.

The singular verb assigns Ezra responsibility and authority for meeting additional temple expenses; it does not imply that Ezra himself possessed the royal funds. The form תִּנְתֵּן (tĕnattēn), a Peal, or Qal, imperfect second masculine singular of נתן (nĕtan, "give"), is addressed to Ezra, as are the pronominal suffixes in "your God" and "to you." Artaxerxes thus commissions Ezra as the royal agent through whom unanticipated requirements of the Jerusalem temple are to be supplied. The clause דִּי יִפֶּל־לָךְ לְמִנְתַּן (di yippel-lak leminetan) describes an expense that may "fall" or devolve upon Ezra for payment. The imperfect יִפֶּל (yippel), "may fall," has as its grammatical subject the masculine head noun שְׁאָר (she'ar, "remainder"), with "need of the house of your God" specifying what that remainder comprises. The infinitive לְמִנְתַּן (leminetan, "for giving") identifies the purpose or obligation arising when such a requirement occurs. Ezra's authorization is subsequently given administrative expression in v. 21, where the king commands the provincial treasurers beyond the River to carry out Ezra's requisitions. Ezra therefore functions as the authorized requester and overseer of temple expenditures, while the king's treasury remains the source from which the appointed treasury officials disburse the funds.