JESHUA jĕsh’ ŏŏ ə (יֵשׁ֨וּעַ, LXX ̓Ιησοῦς, G2652, Vulg. Josue). This name appears most frequently as given to the son of Jehozadak, who was high priest at the time of the return from Babylon and the rebuilding of the Temple (Ezra 3:2). In Ezra and Nehemiah he is mentioned only because of his official position. The only personal or intimate statement is that one or more of his sons were among those who had married “strange wives” (10:18). He (in Haggai and Zechariah called Joshua) and Zerubbabel were exhorted to further the work of rebuilding the Temple (Hag 1:14; 2:2, 4). He figured in the great prophecies regarding the Branch, one of which described in vision the replacing of the filthy garments of the high priest by clean ones (Zech 3:4, 8), and the other refers to the crowns to be placed upon his head as the type of the man whose name is “the Branch,” who “shall be a priest upon his throne” (6:13 KJV), a prophecy of the priestly and kingly offices of the Messiah (see Zechariah).

The Heb. text of Haggai and Zechariah spells the name of the high priest as Jehoshua (Eng. tr. Joshua), not Jeshua as in Ezra and Nehemiah. The name has an interesting history. The son of Nun appears first as Joshua (Exod 17:9), but in Numbers 13:16 (cf. v. 8), one reads that Moses changed his name from Hoshea (KJV, Oshea), meaning “Save” to Jehoshua, meaning “Yahweh is salvation,” making the name theophorous, which is the name usually given to the son of Nun. Joshua is used in Haggai and Zechariah as the name of the current high priest. In the exilic period the shorter form of the name (Jeshua, meaning “salvation”) came into use in the postexilic books, except Haggai and Zechariah. Joshua the son of Nun was called Jeshua in Nehemiah 8:17. The name appears in the LXX as lēsous, which is the regular spelling of the name of Jesus the Messiah in the Gr. NT. The NT name of the son of Nun is “Jesus” in KJV (Acts 7:45; Heb 4:8).

The name Jeshua was given to seven other men beside the high priest of Ezra’s time, the most important of whom apparently were: the priest whose ancestor was chief of one of the twenty-four courses established by David (1 Chron 24:11), 973 of whose descendants returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:36; cf. 2:6); a Jeshua who was the first named of thirteen Levites who, with others not named, explained the law to the people in the days of Nehemiah (Neh 11:26).

The change of the name of Hoshea to Joshua by Moses may throw light upon the fact that names compounded with Yahweh were relatively rare in the period of the Exodus. Moses may have wished to popularize such a custom by changing the name of his “minister” to Jehoshua. Moses’ mother’s name was Jochebed, which means “Yahweh is glorious” (Exod 6:20; Num 26:59). Conceivably this may have influenced Moses concerning the use of such names.