And his wife Jehudijah
Another wife of Ezra; or, according to Kimchi, of Mered; a
Jewess, as the word is by some rendered, to distinguish her from
another wife, an Egyptian, in the latter part of the verse:
bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of
Socho, and
Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah;
who were princes, as Jarchi seems rightly to observe; of several
cities of these names in the tribe of Judah, as of Gedor, see (
Joshua
15:58 ) , of Socoh, ( Joshua 15:35
Joshua
15:48 ) , of Zanoah, ( Joshua 15:34
) , the Targum interprets the names of all these men of Moses,
whom Pharaoh's daughter brought up; and so other Jewish writers
{a}, into which mistake they were led by what follows:
and these are the sons of Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh,
which Mered
took;
that is, to wife; this Mered was one of the sons of Ezra, (
1
Chronicles 4:17 ) the Targum, and other Jewish writers
F2, say this was Caleb, called Mered,
because he rebelled against the counsel of the spies; but this
contradicts their other notion of Jehudijah, or Bithiah,
Pharaoh's daughter, whom he married, the one who brought up
Moses, since Moses was elder than Caleb; but Bithiah, whom Mered
married, was not a daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt, but of an
Israelite of this name; her sons are supposed to be those in the
latter part of ( 1 Chronicles
4:17 ) .
F1 T. Bab. Megillah, fol. 13. 1. Vajikra Rabba, sect. 1. fol. 146. 3.
F2 T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 19. 2. & Megillah, fol. 13. 1.