Nethinim (Hastings' Dictionary)

The word is always preceded by the article, oynjn, ‘the Nethinim.’ In one passage, Ezr 8”, the Keré has the regular participial form o'pnj7. The un- used sing. 1s, is a noun of the same class as vor, στρ. The LXX usually has οἱ Na@ewelu, but in several passages there are obvious clerical errors, such as τῶν ᾿Αθανείμ, Kadewelu; 1 Ch 9? has ol δεδομένοι. The Pesh. generally transliterates 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. We hear but little concerning the Nethinim subsequently to this period.

It is easy to trace the gradual incorporation of the singers and the doorkeepers with the Levites. It is practically certain that the Nethinim, who are so often men- tioned immediately after these two classes, obtained the same privilege. In the post-exilic legislation the Levites alone are mentioned, and almost take the name Nethinim. Nu 38° 18° (both P) state thas NETOPHAH 520 the Levites were ovpn; o'pn; to Aaron and his sons. And 1 Ch 655 (Heb.) ὦ (Bng.)

ἢ were o'7n) ‘for all the service of the tabernacle of the house of God.’ Cf. also 1 Es 15 τοῖς Aevelrais, ἱεροδούλοις τοῦ ᾿Ι[σραήλ. Ezekiel’s reform is thus at last carried out in the letter, verhaps in the spirit also, Schiirer (GJV® ii. 279 (HJP m1. i.

273)) has shown, that although the Talmudical writers fre- quently refer to the Nethinim, they exhibit no real sense of the existence and activity of such an order, for they ascribe the performance of the duties which ‘once devolved on this order to another set of men altogether, the oy or the 77> 092, the young sons of the priests. The name Nethinim supplies an object on which these writers may pour out their bitterness against ie ota that is not strictly Jewish.

‘Ezra removed them as it is said (Neh 11”); the servants dwell in dark- ness, and in the world to come God will put them away from Him, according to the words Ezk 48": the servants of the city shall serve Him’ (Kiddush. iv. 1); ‘a priest is before a Levite, a Levite before an Israelite, an Israelite before a Mamzer, a Mamzer before a Nathin, a Nathin before a proselyte, a proselyte before a manumitted slave’ | (Hora. iii. 8). At Jebam. ii.

4, an Israelite is | forbidden to marry a descendant of those devoted to the temple service, and this is grounded on 25 21%, Such passages as Jebam. vi. 2, vii. 5, | viii. 3, Maccoth iii. 1, Kethub. i. 8, iii. 1, Kid- dush. iii. 12, may also be consulted. Similar institutions have existed in other lands, both in ancient and in modern times. Hermann (Lehrb. der Griech, Antiq.? Theil 2, p.

107) points out that it was as natural for a temple as for an individual to possess slaves who would perform the lower duties which were necessary daily. In a note he refers to Pausan. x. 32. 8, τοῦ θεοῦ δοῦλοι ; and v. 13, 2, ἐστὶ δὲ ὁ ξυλεὺς ἐκ τῶν οἰκετῶν τοῦ Διός, ἔργον δὲ αὐτῷ πρόκειται τὰ ἐς τὰς θυσίας ξύλα τεταγμένου λήμματος καὶ πόλεσι παρέχειν καὶ ἀνδρὶ ἰδιώτῃ. In proof that these slaves were captives taken in war, or persons bought with money, he points to Pausan. iii. 18.

3, and to Herod. vi. 134: in the latter place an αἰχμάλωτος γύνη is called ὑποζάκωρος τῶν χθονίων θεῶν. Burckhardt (Τγαυεῖς in Arabia, i. 288 ff.) says that the employment of slaves or eunuchs in the mosque at Mecca is of very ancient date, Moawya Ibn Abi Sofyan, a short time after Mohammed, having ordered slaves for the Kaaba. ‘The ennuchs perform the duty of police officers in the temple; they prevent dis- orders, and daily wash and Sweep, with large brooms, the pavement round the Kaaba...

The number of eunuchs never exceeds forty, and they are supplied by pashas and other grandees, who send them, when oung, as presents to the mosque: one hundred dollars are sent with each as an outfit. Mohammed Aly presented ten young eunuchs to the mosque.’ See, urther, art. PRIESTS AND LEVITEs. LivgRaTuRR.—There is an excellent brief account of the Nethinim in Ryle’s Ezra and Neh to that Commen . Dictionary, p.

160, gives the lists of Ezr, Neh, and 1 Es; but the spelling of the names j i attention. not stand alone, holds that all the OT passages which mention the Nethinim are from the Chronicler, whom he considers quite unreliable. See his Composition, etc., of Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 17. The reader may consult also Bertholet, Die Stellung der Lar. u. der Juden zu den Fremden, pp. 62, 133, 342. J. TAYtor.

NETOPHAH (7563; in Ezr B Νετωφά, A Negwrd ; in Neh B omits, A ᾿Ανετωφά, καὶ Νετωφά ; in 1 Es B | NeréBas, A Νετωφαέ ; Vulg. Netupha).—A town, | the name of which first occurs in the list of the exiles who returned under Zerubbabel (Ezr 22 = Neh 7%=1 Es 5").

Owing to its position in this list between Bethlehem and Anathoth, it has been iba eclares that the Levites NETTLE argued that Netophah must have lain somewhere to the south of Jerusalem, between the capital and Bethlehem, and is to be identified with Khurbet umm-Toba. More probable is the view that the name Netophah is still preserved in the modern Beit Nettif at the entrance to the Wad es-Sunt or Vale of Elah; the Meo of Beth Netophah, which is mentioned in the Mishna (Shebiith ix.

5), will then correspond to that part of the Wady en-Najil which connects the ady es-Sunt and the Wady es-Surar (Guérin, Jud. in 374 1f. ; PEF Mem. iii. 24 ; Neubauer, Géogr. p. 128; Buhl, GAP p. 194). : Netophah was the birthplace of two of David’s heroes, Maharai and Heldai (2 S 9338. 39), and also of Seraiah, one of the captains who supported Gedaliah (2 K 25%, Jer 408 [EpHar)): accor ing to 1 Ch 915 it was a priestly city, inhabited by singers (Neh 12%).

Hence the Gentilic name the Neto- phathite(s) (‘nobj7; 2S B ὁ ᾿Ἐντωφατείτης, A ὁ Νεπωφαθείτης ; 2K Β ὁ Νεφφαθιείτης, A ὁ Νεθωφα- θείτης ; 1 ΟἿ Β ὁ Νεθωφατεί. ὁ Νετωφατεί, A Νετω- φαθί (δὲ5), κὶ ὁ Νοτωφαθεί, . Νετωφαθεί ; in Neh 1938 B omits, ἃ Νετωφαθὶ). J. Ε΄ ΒΤΕΝΝΙΝα.