Abda

Abda is the name of two distinct Old Testament figures, both mentioned briefly. The name is a shortened form of a longer Hebrew construction — servant of the LORD or similar — and was common enough that two unrelated men bear it across five centuries.

**1. Father of Adoniram (1 Kings 4:6).** Adoniram, Abda's son, served under Solomon as overseer of the corvée — the labor tax that built the temple and the king's other great works. Adoniram had likely held a similar post under David and continued into Rehoboam's brief catastrophic reign, in which a furious populace stoned him to death (1 Kings 12:18). Nothing else is recorded of Abda himself; he is named only as Adoniram's father, fixing the family's bureaucratic heritage in the early monarchy.

**2. Son of Shammua, a Levite (Nehemiah 11:17).** Listed among those who resettled Jerusalem after the return from exile, this Abda was the chief of the Levitical thanksgiving and praise — the senior musician of the rebuilt temple's worship. The parallel list in 1 Chronicles 9:16 names him *Obadiah son of Shemaiah*; the two are generally taken to be the same figure under variant spellings.