3. Number of the Nethinim, Mei; Locality, Revenues, and Social Position.—Though their num ber is nowhere given up to the time of the Baby lonish captivity, yet the fact that the Aboriginal Hieraduli, i. e., the Gibeonites, consisted of the population of five cities when the service of the sanctuary was not so imposing, makes it pretty certain that the Nethinim with whom David and the other princes replenished the thinned ranks at the time when the temple-worship required a large staff of menial servants, must have counted their thousands. As a matter of convenience, they most probably lived within the precincts and in the immediate neighbourhood of the Temple, and must have been supported by the contributions of the people. We have more decided informa tion about them in the post-exile records. Only 6i2 Nethinim returned from Babylon-392 with Zerubbabel (Ezra ii. 58 ; Neh. vii. 6o), and 220 with Ezra (Ezra viii. 2o), under the leadership of Ziha and Gispa (Neh. xi. 21), who, as their foreign names indicate, were of their own body. But even this small number had to be coaxed in order to get them to return from exile, as is evident from Ezra viii. 17, where they are addressed as brethren of Iddo, a chief of the Levites.* Some of them lived in Ophel, which they helped to rebuild (Neh. iii. 26 ; xi. 26), because of its proximity to the Temple ; while others, as in the pre-exile period, dwelt with the Levites in their own cities (Ezra ii. 70). Belonging to the Temple, they, like the other sacred ministers, were exempted from taxation by the Persian satraps (Ezra vii. 24), and were maintained from the Temple treasury, and the second tithes (7ebamoth, 86 b ; Yerusalem Maaser Sheni, v. Is ; Jerusalem Sota, ix. II ; comp. Herzfeld, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, i. 138-14o). Though they conformed to the Jewish religion (Exod. xii. 48 ; Deut. xxix. I I ;
Josh. ix. 9 ; Neh. x. 28), they occupied a very low position, and were even ranged below the Mamzer ("1=), or illegal offspring, as may be seen from the following order of precedence given in the Mishna : a priest is before a Levi, a Levi before an Israelite, an Israelite before a Alamzer, a Mamzer before a Nathin, a Nathin before a proselyte, and a proselyte before a manumitted slave' (Horajoth, iii. 8). The Nethinim were re stricted to intermarriage among themselves, and if a Jew or Jewess married one of them, though all the valid ceremonies were performed, the issue shared in all the degrading disqnalifications of the Nethinint (lifishna Kiddushin, iii. 12, iv. 1 ; Yeba moth, ii. 4), and they were even excluded from the privileges of being exempt from military service, allotted to newly married people and to those who were faint-hearted (Deut. xx. 7, 8, with Mishtta Sota, viii. 3-6). If a woman was suspected of being deflowered by any one, or if she had an illegitimate child, it was ascribed to a Nathin, and the off spring took the degraded position of the .Nathin, notwithstanding the assertion of the mother that the father of the child was a priest, unless she could adduce proof to support her own assertion (Mishna Kethuboth i. 8, 9) ; and if a court of jus tice (pi 11`2) gave a decision, and one of the mem bers of the court was found to be a Nathin, the judgment was invalid, inasmuch as he was not regarded as a legal member of the con gregation (my) specified in Lev. iv. 13 ; Num. xxxv. 24 (Mishna Horajoth, iii. 1). The opinion of Plumptre (Smith's Biblical Dictionary, s. v. Nethinim), that the festival of wood-carrying may have been designed to relieve the Nethinim, is at variance with the origin of the festival [WooD