Jeshua

Jeshua is a Hebrew personal name meaning “Yahweh is salvation,” a shortened post-exilic form of Yehoshua (Joshua), and it is borne in Scripture by several different men — most prominently the high priest who returned from Babylonian exile alongside Zerubbabel. Linguistically, the name’s Greek form is Iesous, the same name rendered “Jesus” in the New Testament, which is why English versions variously print “Joshua,” “Jeshua,” or “Jesus” for figures who share it.

The most prominent bearer is the priest Jeshua son of Jozadak. The text lists him among those who came back with Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:2), and in the second year of the return he and Zerubbabel oversee the work on God’s house at Jerusalem, with priests and Levites appointed from twenty years old and upward (Ezra 3:8). Ezra 3:10–13 records the laying of the foundation: priests in vestments with trumpets and Levite singers with cymbals praised Yahweh, singing that he is good and that his loving kindness endures forever toward Israel, while many old men who had seen the first house wept aloud, so that the people could not discern the noise of joy from the noise of weeping. When the work was later taken up again, “Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak rose up and began to build God’s house which is at Jerusalem,” with the prophets of God helping them (Ezra 5:2).

Zechariah 6:12–13 belongs to an oracle delivered in connection with this same high priest, Joshua son of Jehozadak (Zechariah 6:11): the prophet is told to announce “the man whose name is the Branch,” who will grow up out of his place, build Yahweh’s temple, bear the glory, sit and rule on his throne, and be “a priest on his throne,” with the counsel of peace between them both. Which figure the Branch designates — the high priest himself, Zerubbabel, or a ruler still to come — is a matter of genuine interpretive disagreement rather than settled fact.

Other men named Jeshua appear as Levites: Nehemiah 8:7 places Jeshua among those who “caused the people to understand the law” at the public reading, and Nehemiah 9:5 names him among the Levites who summoned the assembly, “Stand up and bless Yahweh your God from everlasting to everlasting!” Christian readings have traditionally taken the Branch oracle of Zechariah 6:12–13 as pointing beyond the restoration period to an anointed priest-king fulfilled in Christ, while Jewish interpretation generally keeps the oracle within the horizon of the returned community and its leaders; translations likewise differ on whether to render the name “Jeshua” or “Joshua,” a choice that shapes how visibly the name is linked to Jesus in Greek.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.