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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezra 10:6 - 10:6
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Hereupon Ezra left the place before the house of God, and went into the chamber of Johanan the son of Eliashib, to fast and mourn there for the unfaithfulness (transgression) of them that had been carried away (הַגֹּולָה מַעַל like Ezr 9:4). Johanan the son of Eliashib cannot actually be Johanan ben Eliashib (Neh 12:23) the high priest, however natural it may be to understand by the chamber of Johanan one of the chambers in the out-buildings of the temple, called after the name of some well-known individual. For the high priest Eliashib was a contemporary of Nehemiah, and the high priest Johanan was not the son, but, according to the definite statement, Neh 12:10, the grandson, of Eliashib, and the son of Joiada (the correct reading of Neh 12:11 being: Joiada begat Johanan and Jonathan). Now a chamber of the temple could not in Ezra's time have been as yet called after a grandson of Eliashib the contemporary of Nehemiah;
(Note: This would not, indeed, be impossible, because, as we shall subsequently show (in our Introduction to the book of Nehemiah, §2), Eliashib's grandson Johanan might be already ten years of age at the time of the transaction in question; so that his grandfather, the high priest Eliashib, might have called a chamber of the temple after the name of his grandson. This view is not, however, a very probable one.)
and both Johanan and Eliashib being names which frequently occur (comp. Ezr 10:24, Ezr 10:27, Ezr 10:36), and one of the twenty-four orders of priests being called after the latter (1Ch 24:12), we, with Ewald (Gesch. iv. p. 228), regard the Johanan ben Eliashib here mentioned as an individual of whom nothing further is known-perhaps a priest descended from the Eliashib of 1Ch 24:12, and who possessed in the new temple a chamber called by his name. For there is not the slightest reason to suppose, with Bertheau, that a subsequent name of this chamber is used in this narrative, because the narrator desired to state the locality in a manner which should be intelligible to his contemporaries. Cler. and Berth. desire, after 1 Esdr. 9:1 (καὶ αὐλισθεὶς ἐκεῖ), to change שָ×× ×•Ö·×™ÖµÖ¼×œÖ¶×šÖ° into שָ×× ×•Ö·×™Ö¸Ö¼×œÖ¶×Ÿ: and he passed the night there without eating bread or drinking water. But the lxx having καὶ ἐποÏευÌθη ἐκεῖ, and the repetition of the same word being, moreover, by no means infrequent, comp. e.g., ×•Ö·×™Ö¸Ö¼×§Ö¹× in Ezr 10:5, Ezr 10:6, and finally שָ×× repeatedly standing for thither, e.g., 1Sa 2:14 (שָ×× ×”Ö·×‘Ö¸Ö¼×Ö´×™×), there are no adequate grounds for an alteration of the text. The paraphrase of 1 Esdr. arises merely from the connection, and is devoid of critical value. To eat no bread, etc., means to fast: comp. Exo 34:28; Deu 9:9.