John Gill Commentary Ezra 2

Now these are the children of the province
Either of the province of Babylon, as Aben Ezra, where they were either born, or had dwelt for many years; or else rather, according to Jarchi, of the province of Judea, as it is called, (Ezra 5:8) once a flourishing kingdom, but reduced to a province of the Babylonian monarchy, now in the hands of the Medes and Persians, of which province they and their fathers originally were:

that went out of the captivity, of those which had been carried away,
whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away unto Babylon ;
who either in person, or in their parents, were carried captive by him, and who were the tribes of Judah and Benjamin; and they are only mentioned, because they were the principal that returned, though there were some of the other tribes that also came up with them:

and came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, everyone unto his city ;
that he dwelt in before, or was now assigned to him by lot, see (Nehemiah 11:1)

Which came with Zerubbabel
The head of them, the prince of Judah; and the chief that came with him are the ten following; Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, Baanah; the first of these, Jeshua, was Joshua the high priest, the son of Josedech, (Haggai 1:1) . Dr. Lightfoot ^F19 thinks that Nehemiah is the same, whose name the following book bears; and that Mordecai is he who was uncle to Esther, so Aben Ezra; but, if so, they must both return again; for that Nehemiah came to Jerusalem in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes, (Nehemiah 1:1) , and that Mordecai brought up his niece in the city of Shushan, in the times of Ahasuerus, is certain; and this, with respect to both, is denied by others ^F20 , who take them to be different men of the same name.

And the same writer is of opinion that Seraiah, and who is called Azariah, (Nehemiah 7:7) is the same with Ezra, who therefore must and did return, since he went up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, (Ezra 7:1Ezra 7:7Ezra 7:8) , as for the others, we know nothing more of them than their names:

the number of the men of the people of Israel ;
either of the principal of them before named, or of the common people, which next follows.

FOOTNOTES:

• F19: Works, vol. 1. p. 127. So Broughton, Works, p. 258.
• F20: Vid. Rainold. de Libr. Apocryph. Praelect. 111, 117, 148.

Ver. 3-35. The children of Parosh, two thousand an hundred and seventy
two .
] From here, to the end of (Ezra 2:35) , a list is given of the captives that returned, described by the families they were of, their ancestors from which they sprung, or the towns and cities to which they originally belonged, and by their numbers; otherwise nothing more of them is known.

(See Gill on Ezra 2:3).

(See Gill on Ezra 2:3).