This verse is the formal introduction to the list. The Hebrew begins with the usual connective conjunction, but this is not translated in most versions. Good News Translation marks the new unit with “This is the list of the heads of the clans,” and New Revised Standard Version has “These are their family heads, and this is the genealogy.” Traduction œcuménique de la Bible says “Here are, with their genealogies, the family heads.” As noted in Ezra 2.1, translators should use appropriate discourse markers and structure to mark the beginning of the list.

The heads of their fathers’ houses, and this is the genealogy: The list is according to the heads of their fathers’ houses or elders of the “clans” (Good News Translation) or families (see the comments on Ezra 1.5). The genealogy refers to the register or official record of those who belong to the clans (see Ezra 2.59-60). Some versions express this in the plural (“genealogies” in New Jerusalem Bible and Traduction œcuménique de la Bible), while others take it in the general sense of genealogy as Revised Standard Version has done (also New Revised Standard Version). Good News Translation restructures to include the meaning implicitly in “the list of the heads of the clans.”

Those who went up with me from Babylonia: For went up, see the comment on “go up” at Ezra 1.3. For Babylonia refer to Ezra 1.11. Although the Hebrew text says where they came from without telling where they went to, Good News Translation avoids all ambiguity by making it explicit that they went up “to Jerusalem.” Good News Translation puts “Ezra” in place of me, possibly to clarify who me is and also to indicate that Ezra may not have personally included this list in his memoirs.

In the reign of Artaxerxes the king: This group returned with Ezra in the time of the fifth Persian king Artaxerxes, while the first group returned with Zerubbabel in the time of the first Persian king Cyrus eighty years earlier.

Quoted with permission from Noss, Philip A. and Thomas, Kenneth J. A Handbook on Ezra. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2005. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .