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•NETHINIM the name given to the hereditary temple servants in all the post-Exilian books of Scripture. The word means given, i.e., “those set apart”, viz., to the menial work of the sanctuary for the Levites. The name occurs seventeen times, and in each case in the Authorized Version incorrectly terminates in “s”, “Nethinims;” in the Revised Version, correctly without the “s” (Ezra 2:70; 7:7, 24; 8:20, etc.). The tradition is that the Gibeonites (Joshua 9:27) were the original caste, afterwards called Nethinim. Their numbers were added to afterwards from captives taken in battle; and they were formally given by David to the Levites (Ezra 8:20), and so were called Nethinim, i.e., the given ones, given to the Levites to be their servants. Only 612 Nethinim returned from Babylon (Ezra 2:58; 8:20). They were under the control of a chief from among themselves (2:43; Nehemiah 7:46). No reference to them appears in the New Testament, because it is probable that they became merged in the general body of the Jewish people.
•NETOPHAH distillation; dropping, a town in Judah, in the neighbourhood, probably, of Bethlehem (Nehemiah 7:26; 1 Chronicles 2:54). Two of David’s guards were Netophathites (1 Chronicles 27:13, 15). It has been identified with the ruins of Metoba, or Um Toba, to the north-east of Bethlehem.
•NETTLE (1.) Hebrews haral, “pricking” or “burning,” Proverbs 24:30, 31 (R.V. marg., “wild vetches”); Job 30:7; Zephaniah 2:9. Many have supposed that some thorny or prickly plant is intended by this word, such as the bramble, the thistle, the wild plum, the cactus or prickly pear, etc. It may probably be a species of mustard, the Sinapis arvensis, which is a pernicious weed abounding in corn-fields. Tristram thinks that this word “designates the prickly acanthus (Acanthus spinosus), a very common and troublesome weed in the plains of Palestine.”
(2.) Hebrews qimmosh, Isaiah 34:13; Hos. 9:6; Proverbs 24:31 (in both versions, “thorns”). This word has been regarded as denoting thorns,
thistles, wild camomile; but probably it is correctly rendered “nettle,” the Urtica pilulifera, “a tall and vigorous plant, often 6 feet high, the sting of which is much more severe and irritating than that of our common nettle.”