Ezra 7:15

The silver and gold. Financial affairs assume a most important role in this decree. Gifts which Ezra was commissioned to take to Jerusalem came from three sources — the king and his counselors, a collection taken among non-Jewish friends in the satrapy of Babylonia, and freewill offerings made by Jews resident outside of Palestine (v. 16). In ancient times the transmission of great sums of money was made by well-protected caravans. The highways of travel were never safe from robbers, and the larger the remittance the greater the danger of its being intercepted. Josephus relates (Antiquities xviii. 9.1) that the gifts annually remitted to Jerusalem from Babylon in Roman times were escorted by a great number of armed men. Whose habitation. This phrase is similar, but not identical, to that used by Cyrus in ch. 1:2, 3. It does not necessarily mean that Artaxerxes considered the God of the Jews a local deity, but simply that the location of His Temple was at Jerusalem. If a Jew such as Ezra was the actual author of this decree, which was then approved by Artaxerxes (see v. 12), he would naturally use phraseology such as this.