בִּלְגָּה

From the study of Nehemiah 12:18

Range of meaning

Bilgah is a personal name that became the name of a priestly family. It probably comes from the root b-l-g, 'to brighten, be cheerful'. The verb shows up in Job 9:27 and 10:20 and Psalm 39:13 (Hebrew 39:14) as 'to brighten up, take heart'. So the name may mean 'cheerfulness' or 'brightness', but this is not certain. The prefix le- is the ordinary preposition 'to/for'. In lists like this one it means 'belonging to' or 'as for'.

Against the English

English versions render the prefix as 'of', which works well. A few modern versions use 'of Bilgah's' or set the list out as 'head of the Bilgah family'. That makes the two-column layout clear: the ancestral house on one side, the current head on the other.

Used elsewhere in the period

Bilgah is the fifteenth of the twenty-four priestly rotations in 1 Chronicles 24:14. It is among the priests who came back with Zerubbabel (Nehemiah 12:5), and it appears as 'Bilgai' among those who sealed the covenant (Nehemiah 10:8). The Dead Sea Scrolls rotation calendars (the Mishmarot texts from Cave 4) still list the course of Bilgah. Much later, the Mishnah (Sukkah 5:8) records that the Bilgah course was publicly marked in the Temple. Its slaughtering ring was fixed in place and its storage niche closed. Later rabbinic tradition explains this with stories about a family member's apostasy in Hellenistic times, or about the course failing to arrive on time.