Verse 11. - Jonathan, or "Johanan," as the name is given in vers. 22, 23, became high priest about B.C. 380, according to Syncellus and the Paschal Chronicle, and held the office for thirty-two years. Josephus, who calls him "Jannseus" ( = John), says that he murdered his own brother, Jeshua, in the temple, because he was endeavouring to supplant him in the high priesthood through the influence of the Persians. Jaddua is mentioned as high priest at the time of Alexander's entrance into Jerusalem by Josephus ('Ant. Jud.,' 11:8, § 5) and Eusebius ('Chron. Can.,' 2. p. 346). The story of Alexander's having previously seen him in a dream is not generally credited. He is said to been high priest for twenty years, and to have outlived Alexander. LIST OF THE HEADS OF THE PRIESTLY COURSES IN THE TIME OF THE HIGH PRIEST JOIAKIM (Nehemiah 12:12-21). Joiakim must have been contemporary with Xerxes, and consequently have been high priest at the time when the very existence of the Jewish people was threatened by Haman. It is curious that we have no record of his high priesthood, nor of the condition of the Palestinian Jews at the time, beyond the slight hints furnished by this chapter. These hints seem to imply that under him special attention was paid to the formation of lists, especially of the chief priests and Levites, and that the temple service was celebrated with great exactness and regularity (vers. 24-26). The present list is particularly valuable, as enabling us to check that with which the chapter opens, and as establishing the family character of the names whereof that list is made up.
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.