Nehemiah 12:22

22. The Levites… to the reign of Darius the Persian The grammatical connexion of the parts of this verse it is difficult to determine. The whole verse seems to be the heading or superscription of a list of names, and, indeed, the whole passage (Nehemiah 12:22-26) has a fragmentary aspect, like disconnected parts of some more extensive document. It is evident from this verse that a register of the chief fathers of the priests and Levites was kept until the reign of Darius. But who was this Darius the Persian? According to Josephus, ( Ant., Nehemiah 11:8 ; Nehemiah 11:4-5,) Jaddua was the name of the high-priest who was contemporary with Alexander the Great, the conqueror of Darius Codomannus. This Darius was the last king of Persia, and must have reigned so long after the time of Nehemiah, that if the Jaddua of this verse was his contemporary, this passage must have been written later than the age of the supposed author of this book.

There are three methods of obviating these difficulties: 1.) This verse may have been inserted by a later hand. Into a passage so aphoristic as this, such an interpolation might have easily crept. This supposition is favoured by the insertion of “and” before the name of Johanan, as if that name had originally ended the list; and also by the mention, in the next verse, of Chronicles that were continued to “the days of Johanan.” 2.) The Jaddua of this verse may have been a different person from the one mentioned by Josephus as contemporary with Alexander. 3.) Most interpreters identify this Darius the Persian with Darius Nothus, who, after a few months of anarchy in the royal family, succeeded his father, Artaxerxes Longimanus, and reigned nineteen years. Nehemiah might easily have been living in his day, and the Jaddua of Josephus might have been then a young man. For, according to Nehemiah 13:28, Joiada had in Nehemiah’s time a son who was married, and, therefore, the oldest son. Johanan might have begotten Jaddua some years before this. Accordingly in bringing down these registers to his own time, Nehemiah recorded the name of Jaddua as then living and prospectively high priest, though not yet in office.

If these representatives of four successive generations in the high priest’s family were all living at one time, we may see a reason for thus recording their names even though one or more of them had not yet entered upon his office. One of the sons of the high priest had married Sanballat’s daughter, and erected a false worship on Mount Gerizim; and such a pollution in the priesthood may have shaken the faith of many a pious Jew. But it would restore confidence to note the remarkable providence of God in preserving at such a time four generations of high priests to look each other in the face at once.