Nehemiah 12:1

DEDICATION OF THE COMPLETED WALL OF JERUSALEM

(Note: in this chapter, we shall use the text of the RSV, which has returned to the order of verses in the KJV).

This chapter exhibits two separate parts: (1) certain lists of priests, High Priests and Levites (Nehemiah 12:1-16); and (2) the elaborate ceremonies of the dedication. Cook classified the lists thus: (1) the chief priestly and Levitical families who returned with Zerubbabel (Nehemiah 12:1-9); (2) the first six of the post-exilic High Priests from Jesuha to Jaddua (Nehemiah 12:19-11); (3) the actual heads of the priestly families in the times of the High Priest Joiakim (Nehemiah 12:12-21); and (4) the chief Levitical families of Nehemiah's time (Nehemiah 12:22-26). Cook wrote that all of these lists were probably compiled by Nehemiah, except the second;[1] he supposed that list might have been far later due to the mention of Jaddua, mentioned by Josephus as High Priest in the times of Alexander the Great (339 B.C.). This writer rejects that supposition altogether.

REGARDING THE PROBLEM OF JADDUA (Nehemiah 12:22)

This is as good a place as any to dispose of the problem centered around the name Jaddua.

(1) There might easily have been several High Priests named Jaddua. If there's anything about all these Jewish names we have been studying that stands out above everything else, it is that the same names appear again, and again, generation after generation. "For example there were twenty-seven Zechariahs"![2] And even among the Twelve Apostles there were two Simons and two James. Nehemiah mentions a Jaddua here (Nehemiah 12:11,22), apparently in his times; and Josephus mentions another one more than a century later. The critics will have to come up with something a lot better than this in order to late-date Nehemiah. We simply will not receive any such thing on the premise that only one High Priest was named Jaddua!

(2) We believe that Josephus' identification of Jaddua as the High Priest in the times of Alexander the Great is an error by Josephus. There's not a scholar on earth who has not questioned Josephus' reliability on many things.

(3) It is altogether possible that Jaddua lived to be over a hundred years old and might have been high priest in the times of both Nehemiah and Alexander. Whitcomb stressed this, pointing out that one of the High Priests, "Jehoiada died at the age of 130 (2 Chronicles 24:15)."[3] That possibility is supported by the fact that Jaddua died very soon after his meeting with Alexander the Great, indicating that he might indeed have been a very old man when that happened.

(4) Then there is the very definite possibility that the word Jaddua here is an interpolation. It is this writer's opinion that overwhelming odds favor this possibility. Williamson admitted that these lists are "defective," due to copyist's errors, etc. We appreciate Hamrick, a very recent scholar, and his elaboration of this very point. "Jaddua in verse 22 (Nehemiah 12:22) may have been added by a subsequent editor. In the Hebrew, it reads, `and Johanan, and Jaddua' (cf. KJV), as though the latter name had been inserted by a later hand."[4]

All of these four options may be defended, and indeed have been defended, by able scholars; so one may take his choice. Until the critics effectively refute all four of these options, we shall stick to our conviction that the appearance of the name of Jaddua in this chapter is no adequate basis whatever for late-dating Nehemiah.

There isn't anything that betrays the enthusiastic bias of critics in favor of late-dating Bible books any better that their ridiculous seizure of one single word in a defective list of names as their sole basis for denying the Word of God, which ascribes this Book to Nehemiah, and not to some mythical `chronicler' living a hundred years later in the times of Alexander the Great. Such an action goes much further in discrediting the critics than it does toward late-dating Nehemiah.

Counting the list of the inhabitants of the province given in Nehemiah 11, the four we have here in Nehemiah 12 make five lists in all. "They are all connected with the genealogical register of the Israelite population of the whole province, taken by Nehemiah for the purpose of enlarging the population of Jerusalem."[5]

We shall not discuss these lists in detail. It is sufficient to remember that they served their purpose as far as Nehemiah was concerned. The discrepancies, questions, problems and variations in all of these are insoluble at this period of time, twenty five centuries afterward.

One of the first problems regarding the two lists in Nehemiah 10 and Nehemiah 12 is that they do not coincide. "This difference is due to the time elapsed between the taking of the two lists; and also because, the names in Nehemiah 10 are not the names of orders nor houses, but the names of heads of families."[6]

PRIESTS AND LEVITES WHO CAME UP WITH ZERUBBABEL

"Now these are the priests and Levites who went up with Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua: Seraiah. Jeremiah, Ezra, Amariah, Malluch, Hattush, Shechaniah, Rehum, Meremoth, Iddo, Ginnethoi, Abijah, Mijamin, Maadiah, Bigah, Shemiah, Joiarib, Jedaiah, Sallu, Antok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the chiefs and of their brethren in the days of Jeshua. And the Levites: Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah and Mattaniah, who with his brethren was in charge of the songs of thanksgiving. And Bakbukiah and Unno their brethren stood opposite them in the service. And Jeshua was the father of Joiakim,Joiakim the father of Eliashib, Eliashib the father of Joiada, Joiada the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan the father of Jaddua.

Nehemiah 12:10 and Nehemiah 12:11 are a parenthesis thrown in at this point as an aid in the chronology. The names are those of the first six High Priests in the period after the exile.