(40) The Levites: the children of Jeshua.--Then follow the Levitical families, not priests: that is, the Levites proper, the singers, the door-keepers or porters. Of the first there were only two families, and these are both traced up to one, that of Hodaviah or Judah (Ezra 3:9) or Hodevah (Nehemiah 7:43). The hereditary choristers are also few: of the families of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun the first alone is represented. Nehemiah makes their number twenty more; but 1 Esdras agrees with the text of Ezra.

Verse 40. - The Levites. The non-priestly Levites are divided into three classes: -

1. Ordinary Levites (ver. 40);

2. Choral Levites (ver. 41);

and Levites descended from those who had had the charge of the temple gates (ver. 42). Compare 1 Chronicles 24:20-31; 1 Chronicles 25, and 1 Chron 26:1-19. Of the first class, only two families seem to have returned - those of Jeshua and Kadmiel, both of which traced their descent to a certain Hodaviah, or Judah (Ezra 3:9).

2:36-63 Those who undervalue their relation to the Lord in times of reproach, persecution, or distress, will have no benefit from it when it becomes honourable or profitable. Those who have no evidence that they are, by the new birth, spiritual priests unto God, through Jesus Christ, have no right to the comforts and privileges of Christians.The Levites,.... Singers and porters, who are reckoned in this, and the two following verses, whose numbers were no more than three hundred and forty one; whereas, in the times of David, they were 38,000, 1 Chronicles 23:3.