Abdi

Abdi is a Hebrew name meaning my servant — short for my servant of the LORD — and three distinct men bear it in the Old Testament, spread across roughly five centuries.

**1. A Merarite Levite, grandfather of Ethan (1 Chronicles 6:44).** This Abdi is named only as a generational link in the Merarite family line that produced Ethan, one of David's three chief temple musicians (with Heman and Asaph). His own life is unrecorded; he is the bridge between his father Malluch and his grandson Ethan.

**2. Father of Kish, in the reign of Hezekiah (2 Chronicles 29:12).** This Abdi was also a Merarite. His son Kish was one of the fourteen Levites who answered Hezekiah's call to cleanse and reconsecrate the temple early in the king's reforming reign — a moment of national repentance after the long apostasy under Ahaz. Whether this Abdi descended from the first is not specified in the text.

**3. A son of Elam in the time of Ezra (Ezra 10:26).** This Abdi appears in the list of men who had taken foreign wives during the early years of the return from exile, and who were called by Ezra to send them away under the terms of the renewed covenant. Nothing else is known of him.