Eliashib

Eliashib (meaning whom God will restore or the God of conversion) is the name of several individuals in the Old Testament. The most prominent is the high priest during the time of Nehemiah, a grandson of the high priest Joshua who returned with Zerubbabel from Babylon. Eliashib supervised the rebuilding of the Sheep Gate during the wall-repair project under Nehemiah's leadership (Nehemiah 3:1), but he later compromised the community's covenant integrity by allowing Tobiah the Ammonite — a persistent opponent of the restoration — to use a large chamber in the temple courts as living quarters, which Nehemiah expelled on his return to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 13:4–9).

Other men named Eliashib include: a priest appointed over the eleventh course of priests under David (1 Chronicles 24:12); a Levite singer who had married a foreign woman and agreed to put her away under Ezra's reform (Ezra 10:24); and several laymen who had also married foreign women (Ezra 10:27, 36). The name thus appears across priestly, Levitical, and lay contexts in the restoration period.