Lida, but in some places omits ; at 1 Ch 95 it has an eee at Ezr8” 901.) Tyco
Ὁ» (af the men whom David gave), at Neh 10% — (servants), and at Neh 117 OTL DS (their
servants). Josephus (Ant. ΧΙ. y. 1) calls them lepé- δουλοι, and this agrees well with the obvious deri- vation of the word from }n}=‘to give’: they were the men given to the temple as its slaves to perform the lowest menial offices there.
Very little is said about the early history of the Nethinim. Nu 31™- 47 (ΕΒ) states that at the close of the campaign against the Midianites ‘ Moses took one drawn out of every fifty, both of man and of beast, and gave them (j=) unto the Levites.’ Jos 957 (R) relates that the Gibeonites were punished for their guile by being made ‘ hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord.’ In the historical books there is no further reference to persons occupying such a position until Ezekiel bitterly denounces the employment of heathens in connexion with the sanctuary : ‘Let it suffice you of all your abomi- nations, in that ye have brought in aliens, uncir- cumcised in heart, and uncircumcised in flesh, to be in my sanctuary,’ 4451. ‘ Aliens,’ though it may be doubted whether they were allowed to remain uncircumcised, had been unhesitatingly employed by former generations in doing the deer of the temple, and the disagreeable tasks requisite to sacrificial worship. Many of them may have con- tinued to be heathen at heart notwithstandin their enforced conformity to the worship of J”. Others certainly became devout worshippers of the God of Israel. And this protest of Evekiel’s was for a long time quite ineffectual : so strict a zealot as Ezra welcomed the services of the Nethinim.
It is in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles that this class of temple servants comes prominently into view. The list of their family-names contained in Ezr 2%, Neh 7#®, confirms the generally accepted belief that they were in great part descendants of captives taken in war. The names have quite a foreign air. ‘The children of Meunim,’ , were in all probability descended from the Meunim, the people of Maon, whom Uzziah conquered (2 Ch 267; cf. 2 Ch 20! LXX). ‘The children of Nephisim,’ Ezr 2”, are doubtless representatives of the rave mentioned Gn 25", ‘The children of | Solomon’s servants,’ who, in both lists, immedi- |
Ezr 20
ately follow the Nethinim, are spoken of in such a way as to show that their functions were substan- |
NETHINIM
tially the same as those performed by the Nethinim, but that they occupied a slightly lower plane. Their ancestors may have been Cas τος given to the temple by Solomon, or captives taken by him in war. Ezr 8” asserts that David and his princes gave the Nethinim ‘for the service of the Levites’ : such a gift would be sure to consist of captives.
It is, however, in the actual accounts of the Return from the Exile that we find ourselves on firm ground. From the two lists already referred to, Ezr 2% and Neh 7%, we learn that 392 Nethinim and children of Solomon’s servants formed part of the first company, which returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, B.c. 538. Eighty years later, when Ezra had started on his moment- ous journey to the Holy City, he discovered that amongst his companions were very few ministers for the house of God. He therefore halted beside ‘the river that runneth to Ahava,’ and sent to procure a supply of suitable men from a city called Casiphia. We are hardly entitled to argue from the corrupt text of Ezr 87 that the person whose aid he especially invoked was himself a Nathin, although the EV runs, ‘I told them what they suould say unto Iddo, and his brethren the Nethinim.” The LXX omits the name Iddo: ‘I pat in their mouth words to say to their brethren.’
f this omission does not commend itself to our judgment, we may, with the minimum of textual alteration, read “im nw, ‘and his brethren, and the Nethinim,’ or may omit “37 as a gloss on omyn. The last-named expedient seems best : the Nethinim in v.” are not senders, but sent ; Iddo and his brethren, the former in particular, were Levites who possessed authority over all who were
ualified to serve in the temple, including the
ethinim (see vy. 18 19), ial it appears from vy.” that 220 Nethinim were now sent to strengthen Ezra’s hands. Thirteen years later, when Nehe- miah had joined his dispirited fellow-countrymen in Jerusalem, and had put new life into them by inducing them to rebuild the city walls, ‘the Nethinim dwelt in Ophel, unto the place over against the water-gate toward the east, and the tower that standeth out’ (Neh 3%). V.™ of the same chapter mentions ‘the house of the Nethinim.’ Hence it would appear that such of them as resided in Jerusalem had a quarter of their own on the southern continuation of the temple hill. From this post they would easily reach the scene of their daily duties, the temple itself. And ‘they were thus posted near to the exit which communicated with the Virgin’s Spring ; and if their duties at the temple at all resembled those of the Gibeonites, we can understand why their residence over against the water-gate is thus carefully noted’ (Ryle, Zzra, ete. p. lviii). Some of the Nethinim, however, lived in other cities which Ezr 2” designates as specially belonging to the ministers of the temple. Wherever they lived, they, in common with the other religious officials, were freed by the decree of Artaxerxes (Ezr 7*) from ‘tribute, custom, or toll.’ Those who dwelt in Jerusalem, possibly their brethren in the other towns also, formed a guild under two superintendents. These two, at any rate in Nehe- miah’s time, were chosen out of their own class, for Ziha, one of the two (Neh 11), is in the lists at Ezr 2%, Neh 7*.