Jahaziah

Jahaziah is a returned exile named once, in the account of the post-exilic assembly that confronted intermarriage with foreign women. UPDV preserves the figure under the spelling Jahzeiah son of Tikvah; this is the same person whom older indexes lemmatize as Jahaziah.

A Stand at the Foreign-Wives Assembly

The single occurrence reads: "Only Jonathan the son of Asahel and Jahzeiah the son of Tikvah stood up against this [matter]: and Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite helped them" (Ezr 10:15). The verse stands inside Ezra's general assembly at Jerusalem in the ninth month — "all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together to Jerusalem within the three days; it was the ninth month, on the twentieth [day] of the month: and all the people sat in the broad place before the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and for the great rain" (Ezr 10:9). After Ezra charges the assembly — "you⁺ have trespassed, and have married foreign women, to increase the guilt of Israel" (Ezr 10:10) — the assembly agrees to act, but proposes that, because of the rain and the size of the case load, the matter be handled at appointed times by the elders of each city (Ezr 10:13-14).

"Stood Up Against This Matter"

The note about Jahzeiah and his three associates is brief. Two men — Jonathan son of Asahel and Jahzeiah son of Tikvah — stood up against the matter, and two more — Meshullam and Shabbethai the Levite — helped them. The text does not say what their stand consisted of, only that the four were on one side of it and that the rest of the assembly proceeded with the inquiry: "And the sons of the captivity did so. And Ezra the priest selected men, certain heads of their fathers' [houses]... and they sat down in the first day of the tenth month to examine the matter" (Ezr 10:16). Jahzeiah is not mentioned again. He is preserved in scripture as one of the four named figures who took an opposing position at this single, decisive moment.