Man living at the time of Exile and Return
Habaiah was a priest whose descendants were excluded from the priesthood due to insufficient genealogical records.
🗺 Places mentioned alongside Habaiah on the map →
Also known as Hobaiah
Habaiah is mentioned in Ezr.2.61 and Neh.7.63 as one of the priests who returned from the Babylonian exile to Jerusalem. However, when the genealogies of the priests were examined, the descendants of Habaiah were unable to prove their priestly lineage. As a result, they were considered unclean and were excluded from serving as priests. The governor ordered them not to eat from the most holy things until a priest with the Urim and Thummim could resolve the matter. The Urim and Thummim were sacred objects used to determine the will of God. The fact that the descendants of Habaiah could not provide clear genealogical records suggests that their priestly lineage may have been lost or compromised during the exile.
More background: search Wikipedia ↗
(whom Jehovah hides). Bene-Habaiah were among the sons of the priests who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel. (Ezra 2:61; Nehemiah 7:63) (B.C. before 459).
the hiding of the Lord
Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.
2 verses in 2 books · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s H2252
And from among the priests: the descendants of Hobaiah, the descendants of Hakkoz, and the descendants of Barzillai (who had married a daughter of Barzillai the Gileadite and was called by their name).
And from among the priests: the descendants of Hobaiah, the descendants of Hakkoz, and the descendants of Barzillai (who had married a daughter of Barzillai the Gileadite and was called by their name).
Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.