Nehemiah 12:10-11

2. The high priests descended from Jeshua are traced, possibly to the end of Nehemiah's life.

TEXT, Nehemiah 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 Alexander's day.

[80] Ironside, op. cit., p. 114.

There is also an Eliashib in this list, which recalls the Eliashib whose son Ezra mentions (Ezra 10:6). There may be no connection, but this createss the possibility that Ezra's friend may have been a son of the high priest, though not his successor.

WORD STUDIES

PURIFY (Nehemiah 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: Ezekiel 39:12 describes the cleansing of the land from corpses. Numbers 8:6-7 speaks of washing and completely shaving the Levites to prepare them for God's service. (2) Of ceremonial purity: Ezekiel 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: Leviticus 14:11. (3) Of moral purity: Malachi 3:3 uses the figure of purifying metal from dross as a parallel of a person's moral cleansing. Jeremiah 33:8 speaks of cleansing through God's forgiveness.

DEDICATION (Nehemiah 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 man's 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 man's service.