And the residue of Israel, of the priests, and the Levites, were in all the cities of Judah, every one in his inheritance.
The rest of the Israelites, including the priests and Levites, lived in all the other cities throughout Judah, each family on their own inherited land.
This verse explains that while some people moved to Jerusalem, the majority of God's people remained spread throughout their ancestral lands in the other cities of Judah.
📚 Historical Context
This occurs after the Jewish people returned from exile in Babylon and were rebuilding their nation. Nehemiah had just organized a process to repopulate Jerusalem, which had been largely empty, by having one out of every ten families move there. The rest of the population remained in their traditional family territories throughout the countryside, maintaining the tribal inheritance system established centuries earlier when Joshua first divided the Promised Land.
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