God put it in Nehemiah’s heart to assemble all the people to be enrolled by genealogy. He found the book of genealogy of those who had come up at the first.
The people who came up out of the captivity when Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon carried them into exile, were returned to Jerusalem and Judah to their own towns.
It went on to list the numbers of all the people according to their families, the priests, the Levites, the temple servants, and the sons of Solomon’s servants.
The whole assembly together was 42,360 besides their male and female servants of whom were 7,337. There were 245 singers, male and female. Their horses were 736, their mules 245, their camels 435, and their donkeys 6,720.
Some of the heads of fathers’ houses gave to the work with gold, basins, priests’ garments, and silver.
All the people gathered as one in the square before the Water Gate. Ezra the scribe brought the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded and read it to the assembly. “Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen'” lifting up their hands and bowing down to worship.
Nehemiah who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people that the day was holy, they were not to mourn or weep. For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.
All the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.
While they were studying the words of the Law, they found that it was written to dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month. It was proclaimed they were to go out and and find branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths.
For more information on the Feast of Booths go to Day 39, Leviticus 22-23.
All the people made booths and lived in them, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day, the people of Israel had not done so. There was great rejoicing! And day by day from the first day to the last day, they read from the Book of the Law of God.
They kept the feast for seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.