Verse 10. - Jeshua. The "Jeshua" of ver. 1, not of ver. 8 - the high priest of Zerub-babel's time (Ezra 3:2, 8; Ezra 4:3; Ezra 5:2, etc.). Begat Joiakim. The high priesthood of Joiakim falls into the interval between the first part (chs. 1-7.) and the second part (chs. 7-10.) of Ezra. He is only mentioned in this chapter (vers. 12, 26). Eliashib is first mentioned in Ezra 10:6, but he does not appear as high priest until after Nehemiah reaches Jerusalem (Nehemiah 3:1). On his close connection with Tobiah see Nehemiah 13:4, 5, 28. Joiada is called Judas by Josephus ('Ant. Jud.,' 11:7, § 1). His term of office lasted, according to Syncellus and the Paschal Chronicle, thirty-six years.
12:1-26 It is a debt we owe to faithful ministers, to remember our guides, who have spoken to us the word of God. It is good to know what our godly predecessors were, that we may learn what we should be.
And Jeshua begat Joiakim, Joiakim also begat Eliashib, and Eliashib begot Joiada, and Joiada begat Jonathan, and Jonathan begot Jaddua. This is an account of the high priests in succession in the second temple, the first six of them; and if Jaddua, the last mentioned, is the same with Jaddus, as Josephus (n) supposes, who went forth in his pontifical robes to meet Alexander the great returning from his conquests of Tyre and Gaza, from whom he obtained many favours, and whom he had into the temple, and showed him the prophecy of Daniel concerning himself; this paragraph must be written by another hand, and not Nehemiah, since it can hardly be thought he should live so long; and as to his times, this account of him, or the history of his own times, seems not to have gone through the priesthood of Eliashib, the third of those high priests, see Nehemiah 13:28, and to reach no further than to the thirty second of Darius Hystaspis, Nehemiah 13:6 this fragment therefore might be inserted by some godly man under a divine direction in later times, as we have several insertions in the books of Moses and Joshua of the like kind; and particularly in 1 Chronicles 3:19 where the genealogy of Zerubbabel is carried down beyond the times of the Maccabees, and so could not be placed there by Ezra.
(n) Antiqu. l. 11. c. 8. sect. 5.