Neh 3:20

“After him repaired Meremoth the son of Uriah, the son of Koz, another piece,.... He had wrought before in another part, Neh 3:4, but having finished that, he sets his hand a second time to the work: from the door of the house of Eliashib, even to the end of the house of Eliashib; the door of his house seems to have been at one end of it, and from that end to the other was a considerable length; he being a great man, the high priest, had a large house.”

“The wall from the angle to the place of the court of the prison by the king's upper house. - Neh 3:20 After him Baruch the son of Zabbai emulously repaired a second length of wall, from the angle to the door of the house of Eliashib the high priest. Bertheau objects to the reading החרה, and conjectures that it should be ההרה, "up the hill." But the reason he adduces, viz., that often as the word החזיק occurs in this description, a further definition is nowhere else added to it, speaks as much against, as for his proposed alteration; definitions of locality never, throughout the entire narrative, preceding החזיק, but uniformly standing after it, as also in the present verse. Certainly החרה cannot here mean either to be angry, or to be incensed, but may without difficulty be taken, in the sense of the Tiphal תּחרה, to emulate, to contend (Jer 22:15; Jer 12:5), and the perfect adverbially subordinated to the following verb (comp. Gesen. Gramm. 142, 3, a). The Keri offers זכּי instead of זבּי, probably from Ezr 2:9, but on insufficient grounds, the name זבּי occurring also Ezr 10:28. Of the position of the house of Eliashib the high priest, we know nothing further than what appears from these Ezr 10:20 and Ezr 10:21, viz., that it stood at the northern part of the eastern side of Zion (not at the south-western angle of the temple area, as Bertheau supposes), and extended some considerable distance from south to north, the second length of wall built by Meremoth reaching from the door at its southern end to the תּכלית, termination, at its northern end. On Meremoth, see rem. on Neh 3:4.”