God's Golden Chain: The Unbroken Covenant Text: Nehemiah 12:10-11
Introduction: The Divine Ledger
We live in an age that despises history. We are chronological snobs of the first order, convinced that our moment is the only one that matters. We treat the past as a dusty attic full of embarrassing furniture and outdated ideas. And so, when the modern Christian, infected with this same spirit of the age, comes to a passage like this one in Nehemiah, his eyes glaze over. It looks like a page from an old phone book. Jeshua begat Joiakim, who begat Eliashib, and so on. We are tempted to skip over it, to get to the "good parts," the narrative, the action, the bits that feel relevant to our lives.
But in doing so, we reveal that we think more like a secularist than a saint. To God, there are no "boring bits." All Scripture is God-breathed, and that includes the genealogies. These lists are not divine filler. They are not included to make the book thicker. They are declarations of war against the notion that our faith is a myth, a philosophy, or a set of abstract principles. Our faith is a historical faith, grounded in real space and time, concerning real people with real names. God's salvation is not a floaty concept; it is a rugged, historical fact that marches through generations.
Nehemiah is in the middle of a great work of reformation. The walls of Jerusalem are rebuilt, and now he is organizing the people and the priesthood for the dedication of those walls. Before the great celebration, before the choirs march on the walls, he pauses. He stops the music, as it were, and opens the ledger. He reminds the people where they came from. This list of high priests is a golden chain of covenant faithfulness, stretching from the return from exile right up to the present moment. It is God's way of saying, "I have not forgotten you. I have preserved you. The promises I made to your fathers still stand." These names are the receipts of God's faithfulness. They are the proof that God keeps His books, and He never loses a name.
This is profoundly important. The enemies of God want you to believe that you are an accident, a random collection of molecules, a meaningless blip in a chaotic universe. The Word of God here declares that you are part of a story, a great lineage. And for those of us in Christ, this principle is magnified a thousand times over. We have been grafted into a family tree that has its roots in the eternal counsel of God. So let us not skip over the names. Let us rather see in them the meticulous, patient, and sovereign hand of a God who works all things, including the succession of generations, according to the counsel of His will.
The Text
Jeshua became the father of Joiakim, and Joiakim became the father of Eliashib, and Eliashib became the father of Joiada, and Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua.
(Nehemiah 12:10-11 LSB)
The Unbroken Line (v. 10)
We begin with the head of the line after the return from Babylon.
"Jeshua became the father of Joiakim, and Joiakim became the father of Eliashib, and Eliashib became the father of Joiada," (Nehemiah 12:10)
The list begins with Jeshua. This is the same Jeshua the high priest who returned with Zerubbabel, the man who stood alongside the governor to rebuild the altar and lay the foundation of the second temple (Ezra 3:2). He is the one the prophet Zechariah saw in a vision, standing before the Angel of the Lord, clothed in filthy garments, with Satan at his right hand to accuse him. And what did God do? He rebuked Satan, stripped Jeshua of his filthy clothes, and clothed him in clean, rich robes, placing a clean turban on his head (Zechariah 3). This was a living parable of what God was doing for the whole nation. They had returned from exile covered in the filth of their sin and compromise, and God, by His sheer grace, was cleansing them and restoring their priesthood.
This genealogy is a testament to that cleansing grace. The line did not die out in Babylon. The priesthood was not extinguished by judgment. God, in His sovereign mercy, preserved the line of Aaron, the line of Phinehas, the line of Zadok. Why? Because the entire sacrificial system, the entire ministry of the temple, depended on it. Without a legitimate high priest, there could be no atonement, no mediation between God and man under the Old Covenant. This list is proof that God was keeping His covenant machinery in good working order.
From Jeshua comes Joiakim, and from Joiakim, Eliashib. Now, this Eliashib is a character. We learn later in Nehemiah that he is the high priest during Nehemiah's time, and he is a sad example of compromise. He was allied by marriage to Tobiah the Ammonite, one of the chief enemies of the reformation. Eliashib was so compromised that he actually cleared out a large storeroom in the temple courts to make a comfortable apartment for this pagan enemy of God (Nehemiah 13:4-7). When Nehemiah found out, he was righteously furious, and he physically threw Tobiah's furniture out of the temple.
Why is a man like this included in God's holy genealogy? This is a critical lesson for us. God's covenant faithfulness does not depend on man's perfect faithfulness. The golden chain of God's promise can withstand the weakness of its individual links. The legitimacy of the priesthood was not based on the personal piety of the priest, but on the calling and promise of God. This is a hard blow against all forms of pietism and self-righteousness. God uses crooked sticks to draw straight lines. The inclusion of the compromised Eliashib in this list is a testimony to grace, not a celebration of sin. It reminds us that the covenant is upheld by God's strength, not ours. From Eliashib comes Joiada, another link in the chain, carrying the promise forward despite the wobbles of his father.
The Chain Continues (v. 11)
The list continues, stretching into the future beyond the immediate events of the book.
"and Joiada became the father of Jonathan, and Jonathan became the father of Jaddua." (Nehemiah 12:11 LSB)
From Joiada comes Jonathan, and from Jonathan comes Jaddua. Here we see the historical anchor of Scripture being dropped into the future. The inclusion of Jaddua is particularly significant. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Jaddua was the high priest who met Alexander the Great when he came to conquer Jerusalem. The story goes that Alexander, who had been destroying every city that resisted him, had a dream in which he saw the Jewish high priest, who told him he would conquer the Persian empire. When Alexander approached Jerusalem, Jaddua, dressed in his full priestly regalia, went out to meet him. Alexander, recognizing the man from his dream, bowed down and spared the city.
Now, whether you take Josephus's account as precise history or not, the point is that this list in Nehemiah is not just looking backward; it is looking forward. It is providing the historical continuity that connects the people of the restoration to the great empires and movements of the world that were to come. It shows that God's covenant people are not a sideshow; they are the center of world history. The great Gentile empires rise and fall, but the line of the high priest continues, because God has a plan that is bigger than Persia or Greece.
This is what genealogies do. They stitch the past to the present and point to the future. They show a God who is Lord over all of it. He is not making it up as He goes along. The son follows the father, who follows the grandfather, all according to a divine and sovereign plan. This is the essence of covenant succession. God's promises are generational. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And here, He is the God of Jeshua, Joiakim, Eliashib, Joiada, Jonathan, and Jaddua. He is a God who thinks in family trees.
From Jaddua to Jesus
So what is the point of all this for us, who live under a New Covenant? Why should we care about this priestly line? We should care because this entire chain was forged for one purpose: to lead to the great and final High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Every one of these men, from the faithful Jeshua to the compromised Eliashib, was a placeholder. Every sacrifice they offered was a down payment. Every Day of Atonement they presided over was a shadow pointing to the substance that was to come. The author of Hebrews tells us that this priesthood was ultimately weak and ineffective. It could not truly take away sin. The priests themselves were sinners who had to offer sacrifices for their own sins before they could offer them for the people (Hebrews 7:27). They were mortal; they died and had to be replaced, which is the whole point of this genealogy. A priesthood that requires a genealogy is, by definition, a temporary priesthood.
But Jesus is a high priest of a different order. He is not from the line of Aaron, but "after the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 7:17). His priesthood is not based on genealogy, on "a legal requirement concerning bodily descent," but on the power of an indestructible life. This list in Nehemiah shows us a succession of fathers and sons. But Jesus has no priestly successor, because He never dies. "He holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever" (Hebrews 7:24).
This list in Nehemiah is a list of sinful men who mediated for a sinful people. But Jesus, our High Priest, was "holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26). He had no need to offer sacrifices for His own sin. And unlike these priests who had to offer bulls and goats repeatedly, Jesus "offered up himself" once for all time (Hebrews 7:27). The work is finished.
Therefore, this brief genealogy in Nehemiah should accomplish two things in us. First, it should fill us with gratitude for the meticulous faithfulness of God in the Old Testament. He did not abandon His people. He preserved the line, He maintained the shadows, He kept the whole system running for centuries, patiently preparing the way for the Messiah. He is a God of historical detail.
Second, it should make us erupt in praise for the Lord Jesus Christ. The old system, with its endless list of dying priests, was good, but it was not ultimate. It was a pointer. And it pointed right to Jesus. We no longer look to a man from the line of Jeshua and Jaddua. We look to the Son of God, who has passed through the heavens, who ever lives to make intercession for us. This list is a beautiful, God-breathed demonstration of why we needed a better priest and a better covenant. God provided the first, and in the fullness of time, He sent the second. The chain of the Aaronic priesthood was a good chain, but it has been replaced by the anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which is the finished work of Jesus Christ, our great High Priest.