Nehemiah 12 · a question people ask
Jeshua to Jaddua (12:10-11): were these the high priests?
The chapter doesn't call them that. It gives the line from father to son, from "Jeshua became the father of Joiakim" (12:10) to "Jonathan became the father of Jaddua" (12:11), and it dates its lists by their days (12:12, 12:22-23, 12:26). Elsewhere the book names "Eliashib the high priest" (3:1), and chapter 13 names "Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest" (13:28), the same names, father and son, as in 12:10. This chapter itself calls no one in the line high priest, so these notes set the verses side by side and go no further. At one point the chapter gives two names: "Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua" (12:11), but "in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua" (12:22), and "the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib" (12:23). It doesn't say whether Jonathan and Johanan are one man, and it doesn't explain. Jeshua, the first of the line, is named with his father in 12:26, "Joiakim the son of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak"; Ezra 3's honest question on whether that Jeshua is Haggai's "Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest" (Haggai 1:1) applies here too. It names "the reign of Darius the Persian" (12:22), and it says nothing more about him.
The verses
“Jeshua became the father of Joiakim, and Joiakim became the father of Eliashib, and Eliashib became the father of Joiada, and Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua. In the days of Joiakim were priests, heads of fathers’ households: of Seraiah, Meraiah; of Jeremiah, Hananiah;”
“As for the Levites, in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, Johanan, and Jaddua, there were recorded the heads of fathers’ households; also the priests, in the reign of Darius the Persian. The sons of Levi, heads of fathers’ households, were written in the book of the chronicles, even until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib.”
“These were in the days of Joiakim the son of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and in the days of Nehemiah the governor, and of Ezra the priest and scribe.”
“Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the sheep gate. They sanctified it, and set up its doors. They sanctified it even to the tower of Hammeah, to the tower of Hananel.”