If David Beckham was in my school year, I would be known as ‘the other David’. Likewise if I had grown up with David Livingstone, David Attenborough, David Bowie, or David, King of Israel. It’s just the way of world to keep the spotlight on the stage. Sometimes one of those fan-cams highlights some faces in the crowd, but everyone understands the accepted order: There’s the main man, and then there’s ‘the other man’.

In the second chapter of the Book of Ezra, listed among the many names of those who returned from the exile in Babylon, are the men ‘of Elam’. But then further down the list, are men from ‘the other Elam’. There’s insufficient data in the Book to explain that delineation, as to whether the first Elam was the main-man, and the second one, the lesser. Perhaps it was so.

Nothing more in the Book of Ezra sheds any further light on the situation, but this might be said. Not everyone returned from Babylon. Some had settled down too comfortably. Some were unwilling to endure the hardships of rebuilding a city that had been razed and wasted. Only those with courage, faith, and hope put up their hands to make the journey back. And among those who did were some whose father might not have been Israel’s shining light, but were at least the descendants of a man who loved the Light that shines brightest and best. And that is enough to make anyone stand tall.