The number of men from Kiriath-jearim, Kephirah and Beeroth who returned from the Babylonian exile
The number 743 appears in the biblical censuses after the return from Babylon. In both Ezra 2:25 and Nehemiah 7:29, this is given as the number of descendants or men from the three cities Kiriath-Jearim, Gibeon, and Beeroth. These three cities belonged to the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and were among the places that were repopulated after the exile. The number testifies to the scale of the return and to the painstaking rebuilding of the Jewish community in the land after the Babylonian captivity. Beyond this concrete historical context, the number 743 has no well-established symbolic meaning in classical biblical numerology or Jewish tradition. Kiriath-jearim is known from 1 Samuel 7:1–2 as the place where the ark of the covenant was kept for twenty years after it was returned by the Philistines. The name means 'city of forests'. Kephirah and Beeroth are mentioned in Joshua 9:17 as Gibeonite cities that made a treaty with Israel through deception. That descendants from these cities returned from exile shows that they had become fully integrated into Israel's community. The difference in the name form Kiriath-arim (Ezra 2:25) and Kiriath-jearim (Nehemiah 7:29) represents a common shortened form of the city name in Hebrew. Both refer to the same city.*