Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Nehemiah 7:61,62
The Enrolling Of The Non-Priests Who Could Not Prove Their Descent From Israel (Nehemiah 7:61).
These appear to have been settled in the Babylonian cities described although the names of the cities mentioned are nowhere testified to in Babylonian records. This is not, however, surprising as few small cities and towns are. The fact that they stand out as those who could not prove their descent demonstrates how careful Jewish families were to keep records of descent. The main problem that would result from this would be the proving of their right to land in Israel. As they were presumably circumcised they would have the same rights as proselytes to take part in the worship of YHWH, and to be adopted as Israelites (Exodus 12:48). Indeed the fact that they are listed demonstrates their acceptability to the other immigrants already listed, but it is noteworthy that their names do not occur later in Ezra/Nehemiah. They were not called on to seal the covenant, or to supervise the building of the wall in Jerusalem, and so on.
‘And these were they who went up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addon (Addan), and Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel:'
The Babylonian towns or districts mentioned are not testified to in inscriptions and records, apart from here. Note the two things that these returnees could not do, they could not trace their father's houses in Israel, and they could not prove that they were descended from Israelites. This would appear to confirm that the previous names have been names of pre-Exilic father's houses.
The variation between Addon and Addan parallels the similar differences in personal names, and may suggest that they arose because the two compilers pronounced names differently, as people of different dialects do today.
It may well be that these particular people were in fact the product of earlier exiles with the consequence being that they had been in Babylonia for a long time. Thus the only method they had of attempting to demonstrate their Jewishness was by the naming of Babylonian cities or districts known to have received exiles from Israel/Judah, combined of course with the fact that they were circumcised, worshipped in synagogues and observed the Sabbath.
‘The sons of Delaiah, the sons of Tobiah, the sons of Nekoda, six hundred and forty two.'
The name Delaiah was a good Israelite name. It was the name of a descendant of David in 1 Chronicles 3:24, of the leader of the twenty third order of David's priests (1 Chronicles 24:18), and of one of the princes who pleaded with Jehoiakim not to destroy the roll containing the prophecies of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 36:12; Jeremiah 36:25). It was also the name of the father of the wary Shemaiah in Nehemiah 6:10. But it was, of course, in itself, no proof of Israelite ancestry.
In contrast Tobiah and Nekoda are not found directly as Israelite names. Tobiah (‘Yah is good') certainly has connections with Yahwism, but as far as we know was borne only by the Ammonite deputy of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria (Nehemiah 2:10; Nehemiah 4:7; Nehemiah 6:1; Nehemiah 6:14; Nehemiah 6:17), who was probably a Yahwist of the debased (idolatrous) kind (Ezra 4:2), for he named his son Jeho-hanan (Nehemiah 6:17). Nekoda is the name of the father's house of one of the Nethinim (Nehemiah 7:50), but that may have been a foreign name.