נחמיה, פרק ז׳, פסוק ס״ח

As the exiles returned to their homeland, they brought with them a multitude of beasts of burden to aid in rebuilding their lives. The inventory of these animals includes four hundred and thirty-five camels and six thousand seven hundred and twenty donkeys [ביאור שטיינזלץ].

An interesting historical detail emerges when comparing this inventory to the parallel record found in the Book of Ezra. The account in Ezra includes an additional count of horses and mules, with mules being a crossbreed of horses and donkeys [מצודת ציון]. However, accurate traditions indicate that the record of horses and mules was intentionally left out of the account in Nehemiah, which focuses strictly on the camels and donkeys [מנחת שי].

This deliberate omission plays a crucial role in how the biblical text was preserved and organized. Historically, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were treated as a single, unified text. The absence of the horses and mules from the Nehemiah account directly affects the traditional counting of verses for this combined work. By recognizing that this detail was left out of accurate manuscripts, a historical puzzle regarding the total number of verses and the exact midpoint of the unified book is completely resolved. The final count perfectly aligns with the established traditional division of the text [מנחת שי].