Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Nehemiah 12:10
And Jeshua begot Joiakim, Joiakim also begot Eliashib, and Eliashib begot Joiada,
10, 11. The lists of the high-priests in 1Ch 6:3-15 concluded with Jehozadak, who ‘went into captivity when the Lord carried away Judah and Jerusalem by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar.’ Jehozadak’s son was Jeshua (see Ezr 3:1), who returned from the captivity with Zerubbabel. The present list of the high-priesthood follows directly upon that given in 1 Chronicles 6.
Joiakim ] From the special mention of this high-priest in Neh 12:12 ; Neh 12:26, we may conjecture that during his tenure of office the houses of the priests and Levites were registered or reconstituted.
Eliashib ] The high-priest in Nehemiah’s period of governorship (Neh 3:1; Neh 13:4; Neh 13:7; Neh 13:28). His son Joiada, who is called Juda by Josephus (Ant. xi. 7. 1), is mentioned again in Neh 13:28. A slight difficulty is presented by the name Jonathan. In Neh 12:22, we find ‘Johanan’ stands between ‘Joiada’ and ‘Jaddua;’ and in Neh 12:23, this Johanan is called the son of Eliashib. We must either suppose that Jonathan is here a mistake for Johanan, or that ‘Jonathan’ was high-priest for a short period, and was succeeded by his better known brother Johanan.
Jaddua ] There is no reason to doubt that this is the same Jaddua, who was high-priest at the time that Alexander passed along the borders of Palestine on his march into Egypt. The probably legendary account of Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem, and his meeting with the high-priest Jaddua, attended by the priests in their most splendid robes, is narrated by Josephus ( Ant. xi. 8. 5).
The occurrence of Jaddua’s name shows that the compilation of these books must be later than 340 333 b.c.
Between Eliashib (Neh 13:28) who was high-priest in 432 b.c. and Jaddua who was high-priest in 333 b.c. there are thus only two names, or at the most three, recorded in this list, i.e. Joiada, Johanan or (? and) Jonathan.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The six generations of high priests covered a little more than two centuries (538-333 B.C.), or a little under thirty-five years to a generation. Jaddua was the high priest who (according to Josephus) had an interview with Alexander shortly after the battle of Issus.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Here follows a catalogue of the Jewish high priests; which was the more necessary, because their times were now to be measured, not by the years of their kings, as formerly, but by their high priests.
Eliashib; of whom see Neh 3:1; 13:4,5.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. Jeshua begat Joiakim,&c.This enumeration was of great importance, not only asestablishing their individual purity of descent, but because thechronology of the Jews was henceforth to be reckoned, not as formerlyby the reigns of their kings, but by the successions of their highpriests.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Ver. 10,11. And Jeshua begat Joiakim, Joiakim also begat Eliashib, and Eliashib begot Joiada, and Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan begot Jaddua. This is an account of the high priests in succession in the second temple, the first six of them; and if Jaddua, the last mentioned, is the same with Jaddus, as Josephus n supposes, who went forth in his pontifical robes to meet Alexander the great returning from his conquests of Tyre and Gaza, from whom he obtained many favours, and whom he had into the temple, and showed him the prophecy of Daniel concerning himself; this paragraph must be written by another hand, and not Nehemiah, since it can hardly be thought he should live so long; and as to his times, this account of him, or the history of his own times, seems not to have gone through the priesthood of Eliashib, the third of those high priests, see
Ne 13:28, and to reach no further than to the thirty second of Darius Hystaspis, Ne 13:6 this fragment therefore might be inserted by some godly man under a divine direction in later times, as we have several insertions in the books of Moses and Joshua of the like kind; and particularly in 1Ch 3:19 where the genealogy of Zerubbabel is carried down beyond the times of the Maccabees, and so could not be placed there by Ezra.
n Antiqu. l. 11. c. 8. sect. 5.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
A note on the genealogy of the high-priestly line from Jeshua to Jaddua is inserted, so to speak, as a connecting link between the lists of Levites, to explain the statements concerning the dates of their composition, – dates defined by the name of the respective high priests. The lists given Neh 12:1 were of the time of Jeshua; those from Neh 12:12 and onwards, of the days of Joiakim and his successors. The name , as is obvious from Neh 12:22 and Neh 12:23, is a clerical error for , Johanan, Greek , of whom we are told, Joseph. Ant. xi. 7. 1, that he murdered his brother Jesus, and thus gave Bagoses, the general of Artaxerxes Mnemon, an opportunity for taking severe measures against the Jews.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
2. The high priests descended from Jeshua are traced, possibly to the end of Nehemiahs life.
TEXT, Neh. 12:10-11
10
And Jeshua became the father of Joiakim, and Joiakim became the father of Eliashib, and Eliashib became the father of Joiada,
11
and Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua.
COMMENT
The odd thing about this list is that it traces the office down to Jaddua; a man by that name was high priest at the time of Alexander the Great, a hundred years after Nehemiah returned the second time to Jerusalem. Even Dr. Ironside, a thorough conservative, believes this to be an addition by a later hand, though still inspired.[80] It is not an impossibility however that Nehemiah may have lived long enough to see the birth of Jaddua, who could have been a very old man in Alexanders day.
[80] Ironside, op. cit., p. 114.
There is also an Eliashib in this list, which recalls the Eliashib whose son Ezra mentions (Ezr. 10:6). There may be no connection, but this createss the possibility that Ezras friend may have been a son of the high priest, though not his successor.
WORD STUDIES
PURIFY (Neh. 12:27): the basic idea of the Hebrew word is brightness or splendor; i.e. it causes something to shine or be bright. It signifies to be or become clean or pure: to cleanse or purify. It can be done for three reasons. (1) Of physical purity: Eze. 39:12 describes the cleansing of the land from corpses. Num. 8:6-7 speaks of washing and completely shaving the Levites to prepare them for Gods service. (2) Of ceremonial purity: Eze. 43:26 speaks of cleansing the altar for the new Temple of which Ezekiel had a vision, A leper who had been healed would be purified in a ceremony administered by a priest: Lev. 14:11. (3) Of moral purity: Mal. 3:3 uses the figure of purifying metal from dross as a parallel of a persons moral cleansing. Jer. 33:8 speaks of cleansing through Gods forgiveness.
DEDICATION (Neh. 12:30 : Hanukkah): Sometimes a study of word derivations leads one down some strange and unexpected paths. There are three words formed from the same base, all of which have one common meaning: to choke. Apparently from this come the ideas of being narrow or of closing. A collar is placed around the neck of an animal and it is strangled down so that it can be initiated into mans service and trained for usefulness: thus it becomes dedicated, or consecrated to certain purposes. Each of the italicized words is a translation of one of the forms of this word. Our English word, neck, is derived from this same base (note the N and K, also in Hanukkah). So a wall was collared for mans service.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(10, 11) Pedigree of certain high priests, with supplement from a later hand. The six generations stretch over 200 yearsfrom B.C. 536 to B.C. 332.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
The Genealogy Of Jeshua The High Priest Who Went Up With Zerubbabel ( Neh 12:10-11 ).
Central to the success of the new Israel, and the establishment of the holy city as holy, was the succession of High Priests. Jeshua (Joshua), along with large numbers of priests, had already been able to demonstrate his genealogy, as Neh 7:64 assumes. As the son of Jozadak (Ezr 3:2), or Jehozadak, his genealogy is given in 1Ch 6:1-15, and was therefore clearly available. The succession from Jeshua is therefore now outlined, although it is not stated that they all actually acted as High Priests (we have to consider those who might have been excluded by some disability but who might have passed on heirship to their sons).
Neh 12:10-11
‘And Jeshua begat Joiakim, and Joiakim begat Eliashib, and Eliashib Joiada, and Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan begat Jaddua.’
Joshua arrived with Zerubbabel in around 538 BC, and was still High Priest in 520 BC, whilst Eliashib was High Priest in the days of Ezra/Nehemiah in and around 445 BC. If the genealogy is complete (which may not be so for genealogies regularly omitted names) this would indicate a long tenure for Joiakim (although we do not know when Jeshua died). This is not, however, impossible, and is supported by the fact that his tenure is related to the days of Ezra and Nehemiah in Neh 12:26.
Following Jeshua Joiakim was High Priest, and he is the one who is important for what immediately follows (Neh 12:12-22. See also Neh 12:24-26). He was then followed by Eliashib who was High Priest when the walls were rebuilt (Neh 3:1). Eliashib was a grandfather by the time of Nehemiah’s second visit, and at that stage had an adult grandson (Neh 13:28). He was succeeded by Joiada, one of whose sons married a daughter of Sanballat the Horonite (Neh 13:28). This indicates that Joiada’s eldest son Jonathan was apparently a mature adult whilst Sanballat the Horonite, the contemporary of Nehemiah (Neh 2:10; Neh 2:19), was still alive.
If the genealogy is complete Jonathan begat a son Jaddua, who would presumably have been born by the time of the listing, and could thus have been known to an ageing Nehemiah as the heir-apparent to the High Priesthood. It is not stated that he was High Priest at the time of writing (or indeed that he ever became High Priest). Thus it is not impossible that this genealogy was recorded by Nehemiah. Alternately, if Nehemiah was the author of the whole book, the words ‘and Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan begat Jaddua’ may have been added at a later date in order to update the sequence. A slight indication of this may be that ‘begat’ is missing after Eliashib in the MT (although included in some manuscripts), which may suggest that at one stage the genealogy only reached Joiada. (This assumption is, however, not strictly necessary for them to fit into Nehemaic authorship). But the important point in context is that this list demonstrates the legitimacy of the continuing High Priesthood.
Note On Jaddua.
The importance of identifying Jaddua lies in the light that that identification would throw on the earliest date by which the Book Of Nehemiah could have been completed as it now stands. It could not have been completed before Jaddua was born. On the other hand the main part of the book may have been written earlier, with the reference to Jonathan and Jaddua being added later.
But on the face of the genealogy here, assuming no gaps, this Jaddua was probably born around 432 BC. He was the first-born son of Jonathan who was a mature adult at the time spoken of in Nehemiah 13, when his younger brother had already married Sanballat’s daughter, that is around the thirty second year of Artaxerxes (Neh 13:6), thus around 432 BC. At this stage Nehemiah was certainly still alive and active. Nehemiah would thus have seen Jaddua grow up.
Furthermore the High Priest at the time of one Elphantine papyrus dated 407 BC speaks of Johanan as High Priest, and there is no real justification for equating Jonathan with Johanan. How Johanan fits in with the above genealogy we have therefore no way of knowing. Perhaps he was the son of Jaddua. Or Jonathan may have had some impediment preventing him from being High Priest so that his uncle Johanan became so instead (Neh 12:23), he then being followed by Jaddua.
A complication is introduced by a reference in Josephus to a Jaddua, son of Johanan, who was High Priest in 351-331 BC when Alexander the Great had contact with Jerusalem. But in view of our lack of knowledge of the genealogy of the High Priests after this time there is no real reason why that Jaddua may not have been the grandson of the Jaddua mentioned here in Neh 12:11. Indeed, if he had lived to a great age, he could even have been this Jaddua, with ‘son of Johanan’, simply signifying that he took over the High Priesthood from Johanan.
End of note.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
It should seem that the service of the gates, appointed by David, the people of the captivity were anxious to revive. But how it was performed, or what particular service made use of, is not known.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Neh 12:10 And Jeshua begat Joiakim, Joiakim also begat Eliashib, and Eliashib begat Joiada,
Ver. 10. Joiakim begat Eliashib ] Who proved a very wicked priest, Neh 13:4-5 , and his son Joiada was little better, being allied to Sanballat, Neh 13:28 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jeshua: Neh 12:26, 1Ch 6:3-15
Eliashib: Neh 3:1, Neh 13:4, Neh 13:7, Neh 13:28
Reciprocal: 1Sa 2:35 – I will build 1Ch 24:11 – Jeshuah 1Ch 24:12 – Eliashib Ezr 10:6 – Johanan Ezr 10:18 – Jeshua Neh 7:7 – Zerubbabel Neh 12:1 – Jeshua Neh 12:22 – Eliashib Neh 13:22 – cleanse Hag 1:1 – Joshua Heb 7:23 – were
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Neh 12:10-11. And Jeshua begat Joiakim In these two verses is an account of the succession of the high-priests, from the return of the captivity till the time when they began to bear the greatest sway in the Jewish nation. For the Jaddua mentioned at the end of Neh 12:11, is commonly thought to be that Jaddus, the high-priest, who went to meet Alexander the Great in his pontifical habit, as he came from the conquest of Tyre and Gaza, and procured great privileges for the Jewish nation. This catalogue of their high-priests was the more necessary, because their times were now to be measured, not by the years of their kings, as formerly, but by their high-priests.