Nehemiah 13:28

one of the sons of Joiada We should gather that Eliashib the grandfather was still alive, since the emphasis lies on the relationship of the offender to the high-priest. -Joiada." Cf. Nehemiah 12:10. On Eliashib see note on Nehemiah 13:4.

son in law to Sanballat the Horonite For Sanballat, cf. Nehemiah 2:10, Neh 3:33, Nehemiah 4:1; Nehemiah 6:1. The marriage of the high-priest's grandson with Sanballat's daughter was an offence in every way. (1) It showed treasonable alliance with Israel's bitterest foe, (2) it violated the rule laid down in Ezra's time against mixed marriages, (3) it compromised the purity of the high-priestly house (Leviticus 21:6 ff.).

therefore I chased him from me LXX. ἐξέβρασα. Obviously because he was contumacious, and refused to put away his wife. Rashi's explanation that Nehemiah chased him away for fear of his playing the spy and reporting the means of entering and leaving the city, is strangely inadequate. Josephus relates a story so similar to this that it should probably be referred to the same events, although he must have obtained it from some other source. According to Josephus (Ant.xi. 7, 8) a certain Manasse, the brother of Jaddua and son of John or Johanan (and therefore grandson not son of Joiada) took to wife Nikaso, the daughter of the Cuthaean Sanballat. Refusing to put her away, he was expelled from Jerusalem by the Jewish nobles, and took refuge with the Samaritans, among whom, as a member of the high-priestly family, he set up upon Mt Gerizim a rival temple and priesthood. It will be seen that Josephus assigns this to the period of Alexander the Great. But there it is probable that Josephus is at fault; for he completely fails to realize the interval of time between the Return from the Exile and the Age of Alexander; and it is to this chronological confusion rather than to a mistake of -Jaddua" for -Joiada" that we should ascribe the cause of his principal variation from the Memoirs of Nehemiah. For (1) in Alexander's time the organization of the Samaritan worship had long been fully established, (2) it is very improbable that a repetition of such a striking incident should occur just a century after Nehemiah's time.