The six generations of high priests covered a little more than two centuries (538-333 B.C.), or a little under thirty-five years to a generation. Jaddua was the high priest who (according to Josephus) had an interview with Alexander shortly after the battle of Issus.

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.

A note on the genealogy of the high-priestly line from Jeshua to Jaddua is inserted, so to speak, as a connecting link between the lists of Levites, to explain the statements concerning the dates of their composition, - dates defined by the name of the respective high priests. The lists given Nehemiah 12:1 were of the time of Jeshua; those from Nehemiah 12:12 and onwards, of the days of Joiakim and his successors. The name יונתן, as is obvious from Nehemiah 12:22 and Nehemiah 12:23, is a clerical error for יוחנן, Johanan, Greek Ἰωάννης, of whom we are told, Joseph. Ant. xi. 7. 1, that he murdered his brother Jesus, and thus gave Bagoses, the general of Artaxerxes Mnemon, an opportunity for taking severe measures against the Jews.

And Jeshua begat Joiakim, Joiakim also begat Eliashib, and Eliashib begat Joiada,

12:10 Jeshua - Here follows a catalogue of the Jewish high - priests; which was the more necessary, because their times were now to be measured, not by the years of their kings as formerly, but by their high - priests.

Ne 12:10-47. Succession of the High Priests.

10. Jeshua begat Joiakim, &c.-This enumeration was of great importance, not only as establishing their individual purity of descent, but because the chronology of the Jews was henceforth to be reckoned, not as formerly by the reigns of their kings, but by the successions of their high priests.

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.