Nehemiah 7:36 — The Sons of Jericho (345)
Nehemiah 7:36 records 345 descendants of Jericho among those returning from Babylonian exile, part of a broader census of restored Israel.
Scripture
36The children of Jericho, three hundred forty and five.
What this passage means
Nehemiah 7:36 is a single-line entry in a long roster: "The children of Jericho, three hundred forty and five." It identifies the inhabitants of Jericho who returned from Babylonian captivity as 345 people. The word "children" here functions as a kinship term meaning descendants or family line, not only young sons.
The verse contributes nothing by way of narrative action; its purpose is enumeration. Each such line fixes a town or clan to a specific count, allowing the community to verify who legitimately belongs to which ancestral settlement after the exile.
Within the list the Jericho group is a moderate-sized return: smaller than the 3,930 of Senaah one line later, larger than the 343 of Kiriath-jearim or the 128 of Anathoth. The figure lets later readers compare regional repopulation and estimate the demographic base of the post-exilic province of Judah.
Context
Nehemiah 7 opens after the wall of Jerusalem has been completed and the gates set up (7:1). Nehemiah then entrusts Jerusalem's oversight to Hanani and Hananiah because the city is "wide and large" but its people are few and many houses remain unbuilt (7:2–4). To address this, Nehemiah says God put it into his heart to register the people by genealogy (7:5).
The register he finds is the list of those who originally came up with Zerubbabel (7:6–7), and verses 8–38 recount the lay returnees town by town. Verse 36 sits within this town-by-town section: it is preceded by Harim (320) in v. 35 and followed by Lod, Hadid, and Ono (721) in v. 37. The list then moves on to priests (vv. 39–42), Levites (v. 43), singers (v. 44), gatekeepers (v. 45), and the temple servants known as Nethinim (vv. 46–60).
Common questions
Why is a single town listed in a whole verse?
Nehemiah 7 is structured as a formal census. Each verse or pair of verses records one town or clan with its number so the returning community can be reattached to ancestral lands and the priestly and Levitical orders can be reconstituted from identifiable families.
Is this the same list as Ezra 2?
The provided chapter and verses do not state a relationship to Ezra 2, so the question of literary dependence between the two lists is not addressed by the material here. Within Nehemiah 7 itself the list is described as the register of those who originally returned with Zerubbabel (vv. 6–7).
What does "children of Jericho" signify?
In this list "children of Jericho" denotes the descendants or family lines associated with the city of Jericho. The term is a standard genealogical expression meaning the households that claimed Jericho as their ancestral town, not only minor sons.