Osnappar

Biblical Record

Osnappar is a name that appears only once, in Ezra 4:10. Ezra 4 recounts the opposition faced by the Judeans who had returned from the Babylonian exile. When the Judeans began rebuilding the city and walls of Jerusalem, local officials, including Rehum the chancellor and Shimshai the scribe, sent a letter to Artaxerxes king of Persia asking him to halt the work (Ezra 4:8-16).

At the opening of the letter, the senders introduce themselves as people drawn from many nations. The KJV renders the passage: "And the rest of the nations whom the great and noble Asnapper brought over, and set in the cities of Samaria, and the rest that are on this side the river" (Ezra 4:10). "The river" refers to the Euphrates, and the region west of it ("Beyond the River") was also the name of an administrative province of the Persian Empire. The groups listed in the preceding verse, Ezra 4:9, include the Babylonians, the Susanchites (people of Susa), and the Elamites, among others.

The text offers no further explanation of who Osnappar was, or when and why he relocated these peoples. The only thing Scripture records about him is that he resettled various peoples in Samaria and the surrounding lands.

Significance Within the Bible

The writers of the letter honor Osnappar with the epithet "great and noble" and emphasize that they are the people he resettled. Commentators interpret this as an attempt to stress that they were long-established inhabitants who had been settled in the land under imperial authority.

In Ezra 4:2 the adversaries likewise state that they were brought to the region in the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria. These two verses are read together with the account of Assyria settling foreign peoples in the region of Samaria after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel (2 Kings 17:24). They are therefore treated as background material indicating the origins of the inhabitants of the Samaria region during the period of the rebuilding of the temple. Osnappar does not appear in the New Testament.

Ezra 4:8 through 6:18 is written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, so this name occurs in the Aramaic portion of the text.

Interpretation and Debate

Many scholars identify Osnappar with Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king of the seventh century BC. According to this view, the king's name was shortened or altered when it was rendered into Aramaic. Supporters also point to the mention of the Susanchites, Elamites, and Babylonians together in Ezra 4:9, which they see as consistent with Ashurbanipal's campaigns against and conquest of Babylon and Elam.

However, Assyrian records are not known to contain any direct statement that he relocated these peoples to Samaria, so the identification remains conjectural. Some older commentators regarded Osnappar not as a king but as a general or high official serving under an Assyrian king. The English King James Version renders the name "Asnapper."

In the Korean Church

Because Osnappar is mentioned only in passing, he is rarely treated on his own in sermons or Sunday school. He typically comes up only in expository preaching or Bible studies that work through Ezra 4 in sequence, when the background of the adversaries who obstructed the rebuilding of the temple is explained.