Ezra 1:9

9 This was the count: thirty gold dishes, one thousand silver dishes, twenty-nine knives,^[a]

Ezra 1:9 Meaning and Commentary

Ezra 1:9

And this is the number of them
Of the vessels delivered, as follows:

thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver;
these, according to Ben Melech, were vessels in which water was put to wash hands in; but rather they were, as Aben Ezra observes from the Jerusalem Talmud ^F18, vessels in which they gathered the blood of lambs and bullocks slain for sacrifices:

nine and twenty knives;
which, because the handles of them were of gold or silver, were valuable, and might be very large knives, and what the priests used in slaying and cutting up the sacrifices.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F18 T. Hieros. Yoma, fol. 41. 1.

Ezra 1:9 In-Context

7 King Cyrus brought out the equipment of the LORD's house—those items that Nebuchadnezzar brought from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.

8 Persia's King Cyrus handed them over to Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.

9 This was the count: thirty gold dishes, one thousand silver dishes, twenty-nine knives,

10 thirty gold bowls, four hundred ten larger silver bowls, and one thousand other objects.

11 The total of the gold and silver objects numbered five thousand four hundred. Sheshbazzar brought up all of these when the exiles went up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

Footnotes

• [a]. Vulg; Heb uncertain