Hachaliah or Hacaliah (Hebrew: חֲכַלְיָה) was the father of Nehemiah, the author of the Book of Nehemiah, which is a book of the Hebrew Bible, known to Jews as the Tanakh and to Christians as the Old Testament. Hachaliah's name is mentioned at the beginning of the book [1] and in Nehemiah 10:1: the references to Hachaliah distinguish Nehemiah from others with the same name. Little is known about his status: Bowman notes that many attempts have been made to explain the name Hacaliah, "but none is persuasive".[2]