Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Chronicles 2:1
These [are] the sons of Israel; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun,
Ch. 1Ch 2:1-2. The Sons of Israel (Cp. Gen 35:22 b26).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The sons of Israel – The order of the names here approximates to an order determined by legitimacy of birth. A single change – the removal of Dan to the place after Benjamin – would give the following result:
(1) The six sons of the first wife, Leah.
(2) the two sons of the second wife, Rachel.
(3) the two sons of the first concubine, Bilhah.
(4) the two sons of the second concubine, Zilpah.
Dans undue prominency may, perhaps, be accounted for by his occupying the seventh place in the blessing of Jacob Gen 49:16.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER II
The twelve sons of Jacob, 1, 2.
The posterity of Judah down to David, 3-15.
The posterity of the children of Jesse and Caleb, 16-55.
NOTES ON CHAP. II
Verse 1. These are the sons of Israel] this genealogy see the parallel places pointed out in the margin (Ge 29:32; Ge 30:5; Ge 35:18, Ge 35:22; Ge 46:8, c.).
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Ver. 1,2 These are the sons of Israel,…. Or Jacob, the other son of Isaac, who had the name of Israel given him, because of his power with God, Ge 32:28, whose twelve sons are here mentioned by name; the first four according to their birth of Leah, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; then the two sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid, Issachar and Zebulun; and between Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, are placed Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Rachel.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The twelve sons of Israel, arranged as follows: first, the six sons of Leah; then Dan, the son of Rachel’s handmaid; next, the sons of Rachel; and finally, the remaining sons of the handmaids. That a different place is assigned to Dan, viz., before the sons of Rachel, from that which he holds in the list in Gen 35:23., is perhaps to be accounted for by Rachel’s wishing the son of her maid Bilhah to be accounted her own ( vide Gen 30:3-6).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Genealogies. | B. C. 1751. |
1 These are the sons of Israel; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, 2 Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 3 The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: which three were born unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew him. 4 And Tamar his daughter in law bare him Pharez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five. 5 The sons of Pharez; Hezron, and Hamul. 6 And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara: five of them in all. 7 And the sons of Carmi; Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. 8 And the sons of Ethan; Azariah. 9 The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai. 10 And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah; 11 And Nahshon begat Salma, and Salma begat Boaz, 12 And Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, 13 And Jesse begat his firstborn Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimma the third, 14 Nethaneel the fourth, Raddai the fifth, 15 Ozem the sixth, David the seventh: 16 Whose sisters were Zeruiah, and Abigail. And the sons of Zeruiah; Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel, three. 17 And Abigail bare Amasa: and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmeelite.
Here is, I. The family of Jacob. His twelve sons are here named, that illustrious number so often celebrated almost throughout the whole Bible, from the first to the last book of it. At every turn we meet with the twelve tribes that descended from these twelve patriarchs. The personal character of several of them was none of the best (the first four were much blemished), and yet the covenant was entailed on their seed; for it was of grace, free grace, that it was said, Jacob have I loved–not of works, lest any man should boast.
II. The family of Judah. That tribe was most praised, most increased, and most dignified, of any of the tribes, and therefore the genealogy of it is the first and largest of them all. In the account here given of the first branches of that illustrious tree, of which Christ was to be the top branch, we meet, 1. With some that were very bad. Here is Er, Judah’s eldest son, that was evil in the sight of the Lord, and was cut off, in the beginning of his days, by a stroke of divine vengeance: The Lord slew him, v. 3. His next brother, Onan, was no better, and fared no better. Here is Tamar, with whom Judah, her father-in-law, committed incest, v. 4. And here is Achan, called Achar–a troubler, that troubled Israel by taking of the accursed thing, v. 7. Note, The best and most honourable families may have those belonging to them that are blemishes. 2. With some that were very wise and good, as Heman and Ethan, Calcol and Dara, who were not perhaps the immediate sons of Zerah, but descendants from him, and are named because they were the glory of their father’s house; for, when the Holy Ghost would magnify the wisdom of Solomon, he declares him wiser than these four men, who, though the sons of Mahol, are called Ezrahites, from Zerah, 1 Kings iv. 31. That four brothers should be eminent for wisdom and grace was a rare thing. 3. With some that were very great, as Nahshon, who was prince of the tribe of Judah when the camp of Israel was formed in the wilderness, and so led the van in that glorious march, and Salman, or Salmon, who was in that post of honour when they entered into Canaan, 1Ch 2:10; 1Ch 2:11.
III. The family of Jesse, of which a particularly account is kept for the sake of David, and the Son of David, who is a rod out of the stem of Jesse, Isa. xi. 1. Hence it appears that David was a seventh son, and that his three great commanders, Joab, Abishai, and Asahel, were the sons of one of his sisters, and Amasa of another. Three of the four went down slain to the pit, though they were the terror of the mighty.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
The Lord changed Jacob’s name to Israel following his wrestling match with the angel before his meeting with Esau (Gen 32:24-32). Thereafter his people were called Israel, though sometimes the Lord referred to them as Jacob because they were acting like the fleshly Jacob, rather than the spiritual Israel.
In this list the six sons of Leah are named first, in order of their birth. Though Reuben was the older he did not receive the birthright because he committed incest with Jacob’s concubine, Bilhah. Levi received the blessing of the priesthood, while the Messianic promises came through Judah.
Dan was the son of Rachel’s maid, Bilhah, the oldest and most prominent of the concubine sons. The others are named last, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Nephtali was also the son of Bilhah, while the maid of Leah, Zilpah, was the mother of Gad and Asher.
Joseph and Benjamin were the sons of Rachel. As the older of her sons Jacob gave the birthright to Joseph, though all the other sons, except Benjamin, were older than him. Because of the double portion there were two tribes of Joseph, Ephraim and Manesseh. In later years these dominated the northern kingdom of Israel and persisted in idolatrous practices. Benjamin, however, situated close to the tribe of Judah, was the only tribe to remain with Judah after the division of the kingdom.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES.] The sons of Israel. Names more numerous than Genesis, without regard to order. Greater interest by filling up former accounts.
1Ch. 2:3-12.Posterity of Judah. 1Ch. 2:1-2, sons of Leah first; sons of Rachel between Dan and Naphtali (cf. Genesis 29-35). 1Ch. 2:3-8, Judah first, pre-eminent (Gen. 49:8), and descendants given to third generation. 1Ch. 2:3-4, abridged from Genesis 38, and 1Ch. 2:5 found in Genesis 46. 1Ch. 2:6-8, descendants of Zerah, Zimri, Zabdi in Jos. 7:1; the other four given 1Ki. 4:31; called sons of Mahol, or sons of music. Achar (Achan, Jos. 7:1), troubler. 1Ch. 2:10, Ram, first as ancestor of David. Line given in Rth. 4:18-22. The five names from Salma to David cover a period of at least 450 years from the Exodus to the birth of Solomon.
1Ch. 2:13-15.Sons of Jesse. Three eldest (1Sa. 16:6-9); next three here only. Some think Raddai is Rei (1Ki. 1:8).
1Ch. 2:18-20.In remainder of this ch. the writer obtains scarcely any assistance from the earlier Scriptures, and must have drawn almost entirely from genealogical sources, accessible to him, which have since perished (Speak. Com.). Caleb, son of H. (1Ch. 2:18), to distinguish him from other Calebs in ch. Hur, companion of Aaron (Gen. 17:12). Bezaleel, famous artificer (Exo. 31:2).
1Ch. 2:21-24.Resumed reference to Hezron. Jair, son of Manasseh (Num. 32:41), belonged to Judah by fathers side, yet attached himself to the house of Machir. His wife an heiress, and her inheritance was to follow her tribe (cf. Numbers 27, 36), cf. Murphy. He pushed his conquests far and wide (Deu. 3:14).
1Ch. 2:25-41.A second interruption in account of Calebs posterity. Descendants of Jerahmeel, 1Ch. 2:25-27. 1Ch. 2:28-33, sons of Onan to seventh generation in line of Shammai, to fourth in Jada.
1Ch. 2:42-49.Offspring of Caleb resumed, probably of Jerioth, a different mother, 1Ch. 2:18. Two concubines of Caleb introduced, 1Ch. 2:46-49. Ephahs sons unknown. Second concubine mother of four or five sons and a daughter.
1Ch. 2:50-55.A little difficulty in these verses. Some maintain only one Caleb, and others that there were several (cf. Speak. Com.). 1Ch. 2:55, scribes, civil or ecclesiastical officers of Kenite origin, classed with Judah, not as descendants, but dwelling in its territory, intermixed through kindly feeling and incorporated with them (Exo. 18:10-19; Num. 10:29-32; 1Sa. 15:6). Rechab, 1Ch. 2:55, father or progenitor of the Rechabites who retained to late date nomadic habits of Kenite ancestors (cf. Jer. 35:10; 2Ki. 10:15).
HOMILETICS
THE TWELVE PATRIARCHS.1Ch. 2:1-2
This is a most important register of Israel, who should dwell alone and not be reckoned among nations. Notice
I. The six sons of LeahReuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulon (Gen. 29:32-35). Learn
1. Gods grace in Leahs fruitfulness. Leah loved less than Rachel (Deu. 21:15). God works above human thoughts, neither to compensate Leah for lack of Jacobs love, nor to punish Jacob for sinful partiality; but to manifest sovereign power, to teach that children are a heritage from him, and to indicate his purpose in fixing the line of promise, not by the fruit of nature, but the gift of grace.
2. Leahs gratitude expressed in names of her sonsReuben, behold a son; Simeon, hearing; Levi, joined; Judah, praise. God hath endued me with a good dowry (Gen. 30:20).
II. The two sons of RachelJoseph and Benjamin.
1. In Joseph renewed faith; reproach taken away, an expression of spiritual life and dependence, not on human device (mandrakes), but on God for offspring and help.
2. In Joseph revived hope. He shall add another son (Gen. 30:24). Grateful for one, she expects God will give another. Experience of divine faithfulness a great help in looking to the future. Experience (worketh) hope, and hope maketh not ashamed. The wish was realised, but she died in Benjamins birth. The fulfilment of our wishes may be dangerous and fatal.
A FAMILY HISTORY.1Ch. 2:3-12
In this record of Judah, as in all families, a record bright and cheering, dark and disgraceful.
I. A record of family shame. Some were wicked, guilty of abominable crimes.
1. Sin ending with untimely death. Ers wickedness great, a special sin in Israels descendants, a defiance of God and his word to make them a numerous nation. Onan refused to raise up children in his brothers name. An indication of his envious disposition and vile pollution of body. Both displeased the Lord, and were cut off by untimely death. Many, it is feared, act in the same waydishonour body and destroy soul (Gen. 38:8-10).
2. Sin connected with shame. Tamar guilty of incest (Gen. 38:16-18).
3. Sin bringing trouble. Achar the troubler of Israel. He transgressed the covenant of the Lord, and wrought folly (trouble) in Israel (Jos. 7:15). In Israel, in the Church, and among the people of God, with Gods presence to provide for them and protect them! guilty of theft, sacrilege, and invading the rights of God, by converting for private use what is designed for his glory. Achan, branded with disgrace, a monument of judgment, and a perpetual warning. These sins were early, unnatural, and grievous. Yet Thamar received a place in the Toledoth of Christ (Mat. 1:3), and the valley of Achor becomes a door of hope (Hos. 2:15).
II. A record of family honour. The potentiality of families great. Children become saints or scourges, joys or sorrows.
1. Some greatly distinguished in position. Ram, an ancestor of David (Rth. 4:18-22); Nahshon, a prince in Judah, and led the van during encampment of Israel in wilderness; Salma was in post of honour when they entered Canaan.
2. Others excelled in mental qualities. Varied gifts of body and mind in members of the same family. (a) Eminent in wisdomEthan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara, the glory of their fathers house. For when Scripture magnifies the wisdom of Solomon, he is declared to be wiser than these four men (1Ki. 4:30). When Joseph was in authority they dwelt in Egypt, cultivated natural talents, distinguished for social wisdom and fine arts, and became eminent among the sons of Egypt and the East. (b) Skilled in music. The family of Zerah, or Ezrah, said to be sons of Machol, or the choir (1Ch. 15:17-19). Psalms 88 is ascribed to Heman the Ezrahite, and Psalms 89 to Ethan the Ezrahite. Hence they were choristers, skilled in music and its kindred artspoetry, singing, and dancing. These qualities cultivated in tribe of Judah, and attained highest lustre in David and Solomon. Thus families have their sunshine and their shame, their glory and decline, their troublers and comforters. Secure your name in the record of heaven, that when the page of history fades, your title may never expire.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
1Ch. 2:1. Pre-eminence. Reuben, natural firstborn; Levi, legal firstborn; Judah, Messianic firstborn. The names of Jacobs sons a type of human weakness and divine salvation in his house [Lange].
1Ch. 2:3. Er and Onan. One acted wicked in the sight of the Lord, another displeased the Lord. Both the same in perverting a natural ordinance, militating against purity and development of the theocratic family, and deserving Divine reprobation.
1Ch. 2:4. Tamar. Guilty of temptation, practised deception, and committed incest. These events in Judahs family display the goodness and severity of God, illustrative of grace and judgment. Why did God and the Holy Ghost permit these shameful things to be written? Answer:
1. That no one should be self-righteous.
2. That none should despair on account of sin.
3. To remind us that Gentiles, by natural right, are mother, brothers, sisters of our Lord [Luther, in Lange, Genesis 28].
1Ch. 2:6. Sons of Zerah. A famous choir. Influence of music in the family and the Christian Church. The music of the spheres [Shakespeare].
1Ch. 2:7. Achor, the transgressor and troubler. The connection of sin with trouble. Trouble leadeth to discovery of sin. Sin ending in death of individuals and punishment of community. That man perished not alone in his iniquity (Jos. 22:20).
HOMILETICS
THE FAMILY OF JESSE.1Ch. 2:13-15
A special account kept of this family for the sake of David and the Son of David, a rod out of the stem of Jesse (Isa. 11:1). Several principles illustrated in history of this family.
I. The mistakes of human judgment. A family of imposing personsEliab, majestic in appearance; Abinadab and Shammah, great in physical power and brave in battle (1Sa. 17:13). Surely the Lords anointed is before him. No! look not on the beauty of countenance and the height of stature, &c.
II. The law of divine choice. David chosen. Weak things to confound mighty; cripples to overcome giants, and shepherds to rule men. Unlikely men to the front. God takes out of range of appearances, pays no regard to human prejudice. For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. Learn that human judgment is not infallible. Gods choice is best; submit to it, and seek its proof in its spiritual gifts and results.
THE DESCENDANTS OF CALEB.1Ch. 2:18-24; 1Ch. 2:42-49
In the list we find
I. Persons of note. Hur, the companion of Aaron, who rendered help to Moses and to Israel on the mount (Exo. 17:10); Bezaleel, the famous artificer of the Tabernacle, grandson of Hur (Exo. 31:2); Jair, the taker of cities, to which he gave his name (Num. 32:41): threescore cities (towns or livings) fell before his valour (Jos. 13:30). Hezron himself was eminent, one of the seventy that went down to Egypt with Jacob (Gen. 46:12).
II. Illustrative incidents. Events displaying God in history and God in the family.
1. In human families. One childless (1Ch. 2:30); another no sons (1Ch. 2:34). Intermarriage in 1Ch. 2:34-35. Perhaps the Egyptian was upright and wise, and became a proselyte to the Jewish religion.
2. In human history. Ephrath (1Ch. 2:19), named after her who gave the name to the town Ephrath, which is Jerusalem. We begin here to learn the interesting and unexpected fact that the intercourse of Israel with the localities in Palestine, where their ancestors had acquired property, was kept up so long as they were a free and honoured people [Murphy]. Machir is called father of Gilead (1Ch. 2:21), who was born before death of Joseph (Gen. 50:23). Gilead, memorable in history of Jacob and the scene transacted there remembered by Joseph, an observant youth at the time of the parting covenant between Laban and Jacob. If Jacob established any title to the mount at that time, this would be an additional reason for calling a son of Machir after this celebrated spot [Murphy]. Thus we learn that God can make the obscurest eminent, and smallest service memorable. He presides over the destinies of families and the relationships of life. We can trace Divine impress upon records of history.
OFFSPRING OF CALEB CONTINUED.1Ch. 2:50-55
Since Hur was the son, not the father, of Caleb, a difficulty presented here. Best way to read sons for son before the word Hur. All difficulty will disappear, and we shall have the sense. These (the list in 1Ch. 2:42-49) were the sons of Caleb. The sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, were Shobal Salma Hareph. The clause these were the sons of Caleb corresponds exactly to that which concludes the genealogy of Jerahmeel (1Ch. 2:32), and properly belongs to what has gone before, not to what follows [Speak. Com.]. In the list we discover
I. The company of colonisers. Fathers, first settlers of places. Shobal, Salma, Hareph; the four families mentioned in 1Ch. 2:53, who left parents and residence (Kirjath-jearim) to colonise towns and villages in neighbourhood from which sprang Zorah and Eshtaol.
II. The family of scribes (1Ch. 2:55). A trio of civil or ecclesiastical officers, the heads of whom were Tirah, Shimea, and Suchah, of Kenite origin, dwelling in Judah, but distinguished from another Kenite clan which dwelt in Mannasseh (Jdg. 4:11).
III. The famous Rechabites (1Ch. 2:55). Not only famous for nomadic habits of their ancestors (2Ki. 10:15), but for honourable connection with the ancient Abrahamic tribe of the Kenites to which the father-in-law of Moses belonged (Jdg. 1:16; 1Sa. 15:6; 1Sa. 27:10). Their descendants were men of character and influence, and highly commended by God (Jer. 35:18-19).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
1Ch. 2:13-15. The story of Boaz. Prominent in the Book of Ruth. The character of Jesse, as indicated by the incident of the text.
1Ch. 2:19. Bezaleel, art consecrated to God. Jair, prowess and valour employed in advancing the cause of God.
1Ch. 2:24. Hezron was dead. A suggestive hint, a solemn reminder, in pursuits of life and conquests of nations that earthly possessions cannot be kept.
And that small model of the barren earth,
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones [Shakespeare].
Nothing can we call our own, but Death.
1Ch. 2:55. Scribes. A class devoted to exposition of law, instruction of the nation, and preservation of its records
1. A noble calling. To study and expound sacred books, intone society, and spread the will of God.
2. A family calling. The families of the scribes. Hereditary pursuits in all communities. Advantageous to fix traditions and habits in persons, to pursue studies in cities, colleges, and schools.
3. A needful calling. The revelation of God, written and printed, requires study, application, and circulation. A literary profession useful to society; a learned ministry the want of the times. Writing is now the mightiest instrument on earth [Channing]. The families of the scribes. These were the public notaries, or, as some think, text-men, who took the literal interpretation, as distinct from Wise, that is, teachers of traditions, and from Disputers, that is, teachers of allegories and mysteries (see 1Co. 1:20; Jer. 8:9; Ezr. 7:6). The first were the best of the three, and of these were the Rechabites, who being Shuchathites, that is, dwellers in tents, might dwell where they pleased, and now dwelt at Jabez, a place which seemeth to have its name from that good Jabez of Judah, who prayed so hard (cf. 1Ch. 4:10), having haply the help of these holy Kenites, the posterity of Jethro (see Jdg. 1:16). [Trapp].
1Ch. 2:18-55. I. What multitudes unknown! Men with names and nothing more. They live, die, and are buried in oblivion! So we think. But what do we know of history? Best men, quiet service, and patient endurance gain no record. II. But men unknown and most obscure may be honoured. Nobodies become notabilities, and through divine grace introduce Christ to man and bless the world. There will be a resurrection of names some day, says Ruskin.
Whose silent prayers and labours Heaven employs
To do the good, whilst others make the noise [Jane Taylor].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1Ch. 2:1-13. Sons of Israel, sons of Judah, &c. The child is truly and literally the heir of all the ages. The past, with all its legacies, has existed for it, just as all the future will be its own. To whatsoever heights of human excellence it may rise, or to whatsoever depths of human degradation it may sink, the child is now an element in the sum of human life; a new unit in the aggregate of mankind. It is therefore worthy both of study and reverence. Did we but form an adequate conception of the dignity and also the marvellousness of human existence, the oldest man might well stand bareheaded and thoughtful in the presence of a babe [Anon.]. (Luthers schoolmaster taking his hat off to his pupils.)
1Ch. 2:19; 1Ch. 2:24. Was dead.
How he marks his way
With dreadful waste of what deserves to shine!
Art, genius, fortune, elevated power!
With various lustres these light up the world,
Which Death puts out, and darkens human race [Young].
1Ch. 2:18-55. Live for something. Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name by kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of thousands you come in contact with year by year, and you will never be forgotten. No, your name, your deeds will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind as the stars on the brow of evening. They shall shine as brightly on earth as stars of heaven [Dr. Chalmers].
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
LESSON TWO 46
I. GENEALOGIES FROM ADAM TO DAVID (1Ch. 1:1 to 1Ch. 9:44)
3. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH (1Ch. 2:1-55, 1Ch. 4:23)
INTRODUCTION
The sons of Judah were mothered by Canaanite women, however, Perez was destined to be very important in Gods plans. Several familiar names appear in chapters 46. The families of the Levites were to have their inheritance in the land of Palestine.
TEXT
1Ch. 2:1. These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, 2. Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 3. The sons of Judah: Er, and Onan, and Shelah; which three were born unto him of Shuas daughter the Canaanitess. And Er, Judahs first-born, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah; and he slew him. 4. And Tamar his daughter-in-law bare him Perez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five.
5. The sons of Perez: Hezron, and Hamul. 6. And the sons of Zerah: Zimri, and Ehan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara; five of them in all. 7. And the sons of Carmi: Achar, the troubler of Israel, who committed a trespass in the devoted thing. 8. And the sons of Ethan: Azariah.
9. The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him: Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai. 10. And Ram begat Amminadab, and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah: 11. and Nahshon begat Salma, and Salma begat Boaz. 12. and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse; 13. and Jesse begat his first-born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shimea the third, 14. Nethanel the fourth, Raddai, the fifth, 15. Ozem the sixth, David the seventh; 16. and their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail. And the sons of Zeruiah: Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel, three. 17. And Abigail bare Amasa: and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite.
And Caleb the son of Hezron begat children of Azubah his wife, and of Jerioth; and these were her sons: Jesher, and Shobab, and Ardon. 19. And Azubah died, and Caleb took unto him Ephrath, who bare him Hur. 20. And Hur begat Uri, and Uri begat Bezalel. 21. And afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, whom he took to wife when he was threescore years old; and she bare him Segub. 22. And Segub begat Jair, who had three and twenty cities in the land of Gilead. 23. And Geshur and Aram took the towns of Jair from them, with Kenath, and the villages thereof, even threescore cities. All these were the sons of Machir the father of Gilead. 24. And after that Hezron was dead in Caleb-ephrathah, then Abijah Hezrons wife bare him Ashhur the father of Tekoa.
25. Add the sons of Jerahmeel the first-born of Hezron were Ram the first-born, and Bunah, and Oren, and Ozem, Ahijah. 26. And Jerahmeel had another wife, whose name was Atarah; she was the mother of Onam. 27. And the sons of Ram the first-born of Jerahmeel were Maaz, and Jamin, and Eker. 28. And the sons of Onam were Shammai, and Jada. And the sons of Shammai: Nadab, and Abishur. 29. And the name of the wife of Abishur was Abihail; and she bare him Ahban, and Molid. 30. And the sons of Nadab: Seled, and Appaim; but Seled died without children. 31. And the sons of Appaim: Ishi. And the sons of Ishi: Sheshan. And the sons of Sheshan: Ahlai. 32. And the sons of Jada the brother of Shammai: Jether, and Jonathan; and Jether died without children. 33. And the sons of Jonathan: Peleth, and Zaza. These were the sons of Jerahmeel. 34. Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters. And Sheshan had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarha. 35. And Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife; and she bare him Attai. 36. And Attai begat Nathan, and Nathan begat Zabad, 37. and Zabad begat Ephlal, and Ephlal begat Obed, 38. and Obed begat Jehu, and Jehu begat Azariah, 39. and Azariah begat Helez, and Helez begat Eleasah, 40. and Eleasah begat Sismai, and Sismai begat Shallum, 41. and Shallum begat Jekamiah, and Jekamiah begat Elishama.
And the sons of Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel were Mesha his first-born, who was the father of Ziph; and the sons of Mareshah the father of Hebron. 43. And the sons of Hebron: Korah, and Tappuah, and Rekem, and Shema. 44. And Shema begat Raham, the father of Jorkeam; and Rekem begat Shammai. 45. And the son of Shammai was Maon; and Maon was the father of Beth-zur. 46. And Ephah, Calebs concubine, bare Haran, and Moza, and Gazez; and Haran begat Gazez. 47. And the sons of Jahdai: Regem, and Jothan, Geshan, and Pelet, and Ephah, and Shaaph. 48. Maacah, Calebs concubine, bare Sheber and Tirhanah. 49. She bare also Shaaph the father of Madmannah, Sheva the father of Machbena, and the father of Gibea; and the daughter of Caleb was Achsah.
50. These were the sons of Caleb, the son of Hur, the first-born of Ephrathah: Shobal the father of Kiriath-jearim, 51. Salma the father of Beth-lehem, Hareph the father of Beth-gader. 52. And Shobal the father of Kiriath-jearim had sons: Haroeh, half of the Menuhoth. 53. And the families of Kiriath-jearim: the Ithrites, and the Puthites, and the Shumathites, and the Mishraites; of them came the Zorathites and the Eshtaolites. 54. The sons of Salma: Beth-lehem, and the Netophathites, Atroth-beth-joab, and half of the Manahathites, the Zorites. 55. And the families of scribes that dwelt at Jabez: the Tirathites, the Shimeathites, the Sucathites. These are the Kenites that came of Hammath, the father of the house of Rechab.
1Ch. 3:1. Now these were the sons of David, that were born unto him in Hebron: the first-born, Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; the second, Daniel, of Abigail the Carmelitess; 2. the third, Absalom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; 3. the fifth, Shephatiah of Abital; the sixth, Ithream by Eglah his wife: 4. six were born unto him in Hebron; and there he reigned seven years and six months. And in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years; 5. and these were born unto him in Jerusalem: Shimea, and Shobab, and Nathan, and Solomon, four, of Bath-shua the daughter of Ammiel; 6. and Ibhar, and Elishama, and Eliphelet, 7. and Negah, and Nepheg, and Japhia, 8. and Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphelet, nine. 9. All these were the sons of David, besides the sons of the concubines; and Tamar was their sister.
10. And Solomons son was Rehoboam, Abijah his son, Asa his son, Jehoshaphat his son, 11. Joram his sons, Ahaziah his son, Joash his son, 12. Amaziah his son, Azariah his son, Jotham his son, 13. Ahaz his son, Hezekiah his son, Manasseh his son, 14. Amon his son, Josiah his son. 15. And the sons of Josiah: the first-born Johanan, the second Jehoiakim, the third Zedekiah, the fourth Shallum. 16, And the sons of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah his son, Zedekiah his son. 17. And the sons of Jeconiah, the captive: Shealtiel his son, 18. and Malchiram, and Pedaiah, and Shenazzar, Jekamiah, Hoshama, and Nedabiah. 19. And the sons of Pedaiah: Zerubbabel, and Shimei. And the sons of Zerubbabel: Meshullam, and Hananiah; and Shelomith was their sister; 20. and Hashubah, and Ohel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushab-hesed, five. 21. And the sons of Hananiah: Pelatiah, and Jeshaiah; the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, the sons of Obadiah, the sons of Shecaniah. 22. And the sons of Shecaniah: Shemaiah. And the sons of Shemaiah: Hattush, and Igal, and Bariah, and Neariah, and Shaphat, six. 23. And the sons of Neariah: Elioenai, and Hizkiah, and Azrikam, three. 24. And the sons of Elioenai: Hodaviah, and Eliashib, and Pelaiah, and Akkub, and Johanan, and Delaiah, and Anani, seven.
1Ch. 4:1. The sons of Jusah: Perez, Hezron, and Carmi, and Hur, and Shobal. 2. And Reaiah the son of Shobal begat Jahath; and Jahath begat Ahumai and Lahad. These are the families of the Zorathites. 3. And these were the sons of the father of Etam: Jezreel, and Ishma, and Idbash; and the name of their sister was Hazzelelponi; 4. and Penuel the father of Gedor, and Ezer the father of Hushah. These are the sons of Hur, the first-born of Ephrathah, the father of Bethlehem. 5. And Ashhur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah. 6. And Naarah bare him Ahuzzam, and Hepher, and Temeni, and Haahashtari. These were the sons of Naarah. 7. And the sons of Helah were Zereth, Izhar, and Ethnan. 8. And Hakkoz begat Anub, and Zobebah, and the families of Aharhel the son of Harum. 9. And Jabez was more honorable than his brethren: and his mother called his name Jabez, saying Because I bare him with sorrow. 10. And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my border, and that thy hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it be not to my sorrow! And God granted him that which he requested. 11. And Chelub, the brother of Shuhah begat Mehir, who was the father of Eshton. 12. And Eshton begat Beth-rapha, and Paseah, and Tehinnah the father of Irnahash. These are the men of Recah. 13. And the sons of Kenaz: Othniel, and Seraiah. And the sons of Othniel; Hathath. 14. And Meonothai begat Ophrah: and Seraiah begat Joab the father of Ge-harashim; for they were craftsmen. 15. And the sons of Caleb the son of Jephunneh: Iru, Elah, and Naam; and the sons of Elah; and Kenaz. 16. And the sons of Jehallelel: Ziph, and Ziphah, Tiria, and Asarel. 17. And the sons of Ezrah: Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and Jalon; and she bare Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of Eshtemoa. 18. And his wife the Jewess bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Soco, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered took. 19. And the sons of the wife of Hodiah, the sister of Naham, were the father of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa the Maacathite. 20. And the sons of Shimon: Amnon, and Rinnan, Benhanan, and Tilon. And the sons of Ishi: Zoheth, and Ben-zoheth. 21. The sons of Shelah the son of Judah; Er the father of Lecah, and Laadah the father of Mareshah, and the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen, of the house of Ashbea; 22. and Jokjm, and the men of Cozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, who had dominion in Moab, and Jashubi-lehem. And the records are ancient. 23. These were the potters, and the inhabitants of Netaim and Gederah: there they dwelt with the king for his work.
PARAPHRASE
1Ch. 2:1. The sons of Israel were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, Asher. 3. Judah had three sons by Bath-shua, a girl from Canaan: Er, Onan, and Shelah. But the oldest son, Er, was so wicked that the Lord killed him. 4. Then Ers widow, Tamar, and her father-in-law, Judah, became the parents of twin sons, Perez and Zerah. So Judah had five sons.
5. The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamuel. 6. The sons of Zerah were: Zimri, Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara. 7. (Achan, the son of Carmi, was the man who robbed God and was such a troublemaker for his nation.) 8. Ethans son was Azariah.
9. The sons of Hezron were Jerahmeel, Ram, and Chelubai. 10. Ram was the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab was the father of Nahshon, a leader of Israel. 11. Nahshon was the father of Salma, and Salma was the father of Boaz. 12. Boaz was the father of Obed, and Obed was the father of Jesse. 13. Jesses first son was Eliab, his second was Abinadab, his third was Shimea, his fourth was Nethanel, his fifth was Raddai, his sixth was Ozem, and his seventh was David. He also had two girls (by the same wife) named Zeruiah and Abigail. Zeruiahs sons were Abishai, Joab, and Asahel. 17. Abigail, whose husband was Jether from the land of Ishmael, had a son named Amasa.
18. Caleb (the sons of Hezron) had two wives, Azubah and Jerioth. These are the children of Azubah: Jesher, Shobab, and Ardon. 19. After Azubahs death, Caleb married Ephrath, who presented him with a son, Hur. 20. Hurs son was Uri, and Uris son was Bezalel. 21. Hezron married Machirs daughter at the age of sixty, and she presented him with a son Segub (Machir was also the father of Gilead.) 22. Segub was the father of Jair, who ruled twenty-three cities in the land of Gilead. 23. But Geshur and Aram wrested these cities from him and also took Kenath and its sixty surrounding villages. 24. Soon after his father Hezrons death, Caleb married Ephrathah, his fathers widow, and she gave birth to Ashhur, the father of Tekoa.
25. These are the sons of Jerahmeel (the oldest son of Hezron): Ram (the oldest), Bunah, Oren, Ozem, and Ahijah. 26. Jerahmeels second wife Atarah was the mother of Onam. 27. The sons of Ram: Maaz, Jamin, and Eker. 28. Onams sons were Shammai and Jada. Shammais sons were Nadab and Abishur. 29. The sons of Abishur and his wife Abihail were Ahban and Molid. 30. Nadabs sons were Seled and Appa-im. Seled died without children, but Appa-im had a son named Ishi; Ishis son was Sheshan; and Sheshans son was Ahlai. 32. Shammais brother Jada had two sons, Jether and Jonathan. Jether died without children, but Jonathan had two sons named Peleth and Zaza. 34, 35. Sheshan had no sons, although he had several daughters. He gave one of his daughters to be the wife of Jarha, his Egyptian servant. And they had a son whom they named Attai. 36. Attais son was Nathan; Nathans son was Zabad; Zabads son was Ephlal; Ephlals son was Obed; 38. Obeds son was Jehu; Jehus son was Azariah; 39. Azariahs son was Helez; Helezs son was Ele-asah; 40. Ele-asahs son was Sismai; Sismais son was Shellum; 41. Shallums son was Jekamiah; Jekamiahs son was Elishama.
42. The oldest son of Caleb (Jerahmeels brother) was Mesha; he was the father of Ziph, who was father of Mareshah, who was the father of Hebron. 43. The sons of Hebron: Korah, Tappuah, Rekem, and Shema. 44. Shema was the father of Raham, who was the father of Jorke-am. Rekem was the father of Shammai. 45. Shammais son was Maon, the father of Bethzur, 46. Calebs concubine Ephah bore him Haran, Moza, and Gazez; Haran had a son named Gazez. 47. The sons of Jahdai: Regem, Jotham, Geshan, Pelet, Ephah, and Shaaph. 48, 49. Another of Calebs concubines, Maacah, bore him Sheber, Tirhanah, Shaaph (the father of Madmannah), and Sheva (the father of Machbenah and of Gibe-a). Caleb also had a daughter, whose name was Achsah.
50. The sons of Hur (who was the oldest son of Caleb and Ephrathah) were Shobal (the father of Kiriath-jearim), 51. Salma (the father of Bethlehem), and Hareph (the father of Beth-gader). 52. Shobals sons included Kiriath-jearim and Haroeh, the ancestor of half of the Menuhoth tribe. 53. The families of Kiriath-jearim were the Ithrites, the Puthites, the Shumathites, and the Mishraites (from whom descended the Zorathites and Eshtaolites). 54. The descendants of Salma were his son Bethlehem, the Netophathites, Atrothbeth-joab, half the Manahathites, and the Zorites; 55. they also included the families of the writers living at Jabezthe Tirathites, Shimeathites, and Sucathites. All these are Kenites who descended from Hammath, the founder of the family of Rechab.
1Ch. 3:1. King David oldest son was Amnon, who was born to his wife, Ahino-am of Jezreel. The second was Daniel, whose mother was Abigail from Carmel. 2. The third was Absalom, the sons of his wife Maacah, who was the daughter of King Talmai of Geshur. The fourth was Adonijah, the son of Haggith. 3. The fifth was Shephatiah, the son of Abital. The sixth was Ithream, the son of his wife Eglah. 4. These six were born to him in Hebron, where he reigned seven and one-half years. Then he moved the capital to Jerusalem, where he reigned another thirty-three years. 5. While he was in Jerusalem, his wife Bathsheba (the daughter of Ammi-el) became the mother of his sons Shime-a, Shobab, Nathan, and Solomon. 68. David also had nine other sons: Ibhar, Elishama, Eliphelet, Nogah, Nepheg, Japhia, Elishama, Eliada, and Eliphelet. 9. (This list does not include the sons of his concubines.) David also had a daughter Tamar.
1014. These are the descendants of King Solomon: Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Ahaziah, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah. 15. The sons of Josiah were: Johanan, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah, Shallum. 16. The sons of Jehoiakim: Jeconiah, Zedekiah. 1718. These are the sons who were born to King Jeconiah during the years that he was under house arrest: She-altiel, Malchiram, Pedaiah, Shenazzar, Jekamiah, Hoshama, Nedabiah. 1920. Pedaiah was the father of Zerubbabel and Shime-i. Zerubbabels children were: Meshullam, Hananiah, Hashubah, Ohel, Berechiah, Hasadiah, Jushab-hesed, Shelomith (a daughter). 2122. Hananiahs sons were Pelatiah and jeshaiah; Jeshaiahs son was Rephaiah; Rephaiahs son was Arnan; Arnans son was Obadiah; Obadiahs son was Shecaniah. Shecaniahs son was Shemaiah; Shemaiah had six sons, including Hattush, Igal, Bariah, Neariah, and Shaphat. 23. Neariah had three sons: Eli-o-enai, Hizkiah, Azrikam. 24. Eli-o-enai had seven sons: Hodaviah, Eliashib, Pelaiah, Akkub, Johanan, Delaiah, Anani.
1Ch. 4:1. These are the sons of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Carmi, Hur, Shobal. 2. Shobals son Re-aiah was the father of Jahath, the ancestor of Ahumai and Lahad. These were known as the Zorathite clans. 34. The descendants of Etam: Jezreel, Ishma, Idbash, Hazzelelponi (his daughter), Penuel (the ancestor of Gedor), Ezer (the ancestor of Hushah), The son of Hur, the oldest son of Ephrathah, who was the father of Bethlehem. 5. Ashhur, the father of Tekoa, had two wives-Helah, and Naarah. 6. Naarah bore him Ahuzzam, Nepher, Temeni, and Haahashtari; and Helah bore him Zereth, Izhar, and Ethnan. 8. Koz was the father of Anub and Zobebah; he was also the ancestor of the clan named after Aharhel, the son of Harum. 9. Jabez was more distinguished than any of his brothers. His mother named him Jabez because she had such a hard time at his birth (Jabez means Distress). 10. He was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, Oh, that you would wonderfully bless me and help me in my work; please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all evil and disaster! And God granted him his request. ll, 12. The descendants of Recah were: Chelub (the brother of Shuhah), whose son was Mahir, the father of Eshton; Eshton was the father of Bethrapha, Paseah, and Tehinnah; Tehinnah was the father of Irnahash. 13. The sons of Kenaz were Othni-el and Seraiah. Othni-els sons were Hathath and Meonothai; 14. Meonothai was the father of Ophrah; Seraiah was the father of Joab, the ancestor of the inhabitants of Craftsman Valley (called that because many craftsmen lived there). 15. The sons of Caleb (the son of Jephunneh): Iru, Elah, Naam. The sons of Elah included Kenaz. 16. Jehallelels sons were: Ziph, Ziphah, Tiri-a, Asarel. 17. Ezrahs sons were: Jether, Mered, Epher, Jalon. Mered married Bithi-ah, an Egyptian princess. She was the mother of Miriam, Shammai, and Ishbahan ancestor of Eshtemoa. 18. Eshtemoas wife was a Jewess; she was the mother of Jered, Heber, and Jekuthiel, who were, respectively, the ancestors of the Gedorites, Socoites, and Zanoahites. 19. Hodiahs wife was the sister of Naham. One of her sons was the father of Keilah the Garmite, and another was the father of Eshtemoa the Maacathite. 20. The sons of Shimon: Amnon, Rinnah, Ben-hanan, Tilon. The sons of Ishi: Zoheth, Ben-zoheth. 2122. The sons of Shelah (the son of Judah): Er (the father of Lecah), Laadah (the father of Nareshah), the families of the linen workers who worked at Beth-ashbea, Jokim, the clans of Cozeba, Joash, Saraph (who was a ruler in Moab before he returned to Lehem). These names all come from very ancient records. 23. These clans were noted for their pottery, gardening, and planting; they all worked for the king:
26. Mishmas sons included Hammu-el (the father of Zaccur and grandfather of Shime-i). 27. Shime-i had sixteen sons and six daughters, but none of his brothers had large familiesthey all had fewer children than was normal in Judah. 28. They lived at Beer-sheba, Moladah, Hazar-shual, 29. Bilhah, Ezem, Tolad, 30. Bethuel, Hormah, Ziklag, 31. Bethmar-caboth, Hazar-susim, Beth-biri, and Sha-araim. These cities were under their control until the time of David. 3233. Their descendants also lived in or near Etam, Ain, Rimmon, Tochen, and Ashan; some were as far away as Baal. (These facts are recorded in their genealogies.) 3439. These are the names of some of the princes of wealthy clans who traveled to the east side of Gedor Valley in search of pasture for their flocks: Meshobab, Jamlech, Joshah, Joel, Jehu, Eli-o-enai, Ja-akobah, Jeshohaiah, Asaiah, Adi-el, Jesimi-el, Benaiah, Ziza (the son of Shiphi, son of Allon, son of Jedaiah, son of Shimri, son of Shemaiah).
COMMENTARY
This account of the descendants of the tribe of Judah began in chapter 2 and continues through 1Ch. 4:23. Judahs descendants through Perez are listed in 1Ch. 4:1-23. Judah was the father of five sons. His son, Perez, was the one through whom the line of David passed. 1Ch. 4:1 lists five generations beginning with Perez. Many of these names in 1Ch. 2:1-23 are not mentioned elsewhere. Hur had been named in 1Ch. 2:19-20. There was a village in the tribe of Judah called Tekoa. This name appears in the genealogical table (1Ch. 2:5). Jabez is given some special attention (1Ch. 2:9-10). The experience of sorrow was associated with his birth. He did not want to lead a sorrowful life so he walked with God and he was kept from evil. Buried here in an ancient family record is the affirmation that any person who will trust God can master circumstances which otherwise would defeat him. Othniel (1Ch. 2:13) was Calebs nephew and Israels judge in delivering his people from Cushan-rishathaim and the Mesopotamians (Jdg. 3:9-10). Caleb (1Ch. 2:15) is well known to us. In the hill country of Judah there was a village named Eshtemoh (Jos. 15:50). This name is very similar to the Eshtemoa of 1Ch. 2:17. The names of Miriam and Shammai are familiar Hebrew names. This Miriam is not to be confused with Moses sister. A certain wOrnan (1Ch. 2:18) is called the Jewess. This is most likely nothing more than a translation of the proper name Hajehudijah. Another connection with Egypt is reflected in the reference to Bithiah, Pharaohs daughter, who became wife to Mered. Amnon (1Ch. 2:20) must be distinguished from Davids son by the same name. A brief reference is made to Shelahs sons in 1Ch. 2:21-23. There were among these people some highly skilled craftsmen in the manufacture of fine linen and pottery.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1, 2) The sons of Israel.The list is apparently taken from Gen. 35:23-26, where the heading is, Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. The chronicler omits the mothers, and puts Dan before instead of after Joseph and Benjamin, as if to hint that Dan was considered Rachels elder son. (See Gen. 30:6.) In the list at Gen. 46:9-23, Gad and Asher follow Zebulun, and Dan follows Joseph and Benjamin. Of course accident may have caused the transposition of Dan with Joseph and Benjamin in our list, especially as it otherwise agrees with Gen. 35:3-4.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1Ch 2:13-17 Comments – The Descendents of Jesse – Note Jesse’s descendents:
Jesse begat Eliab, Abinadab, Shinma, Nethaneel, Raddai, Ozem, David, Zeruiah, Abigail. Zeruiah begat Abishai, Joab, Asahel. Abigail married Jether (Ithra) and begat Amasa (2Sa 17:25).
2Sa 17:25, “And Absalom made Amasa captain of the host instead of Joab: which Amasa was a man’s son, whose name was Ithra an Israelite, that went in to Abigail the daughter of Nahash, sister to Zeruiah Joab’s mother.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
From Israel to Jesse
v. 1. These are the sons of Israel, v. 2. Dan, v. 3. The sons of Judah, v. 4. And Tamar, his daughter-in-law, bare him Pharez and Zerah, v. 5. The sons of Pharez: Hezron and Hamul.
v. 6. And the sons of Zerah, v. 7. And the sons of Carmi: Achar v. 8. And the sons of Ethan: Azariah.
v. 9. The sons also of Hezron that were born unto him: Jerahmeel, and Ram v. 10. And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah, v. 11. and Nahshon begat Salma v. 12. and Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse. v. 13. And Jesse begat his first-born, Eliab; and Abinadab, the second; and Shimma v. 14. Nethaneel, the fourth; Raddai, the fifth;
v. 15. Ozem, the sixth; David, the seventh, v. 16. whose sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail. And the sons of Zeruiah, v. 17. And Abigail bare Amasa; and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmeelite,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
The interest of this chapter owes something to the several unsatisfied questions which it suggests, to difficult and knotty points which nevertheless do not altogether counsel despair, and to occasional significant indications of sources drawn upon by the compiler, certainly quite additional to the contents of the existing books of the Old Testament.
We know something of what we have to expect when the name of Israel, or Jacob, is announced in the first verse, with his twelve sonsthose “patriarchs,” some of whom (certainly not as many as eleven, for Reuben was absent, and, with scarcely a doubt, Benjamin), “moved with envy, sold into Egypt Joseph,” the twelfth (Act 7:9). We here enter, in fact, upon the genealogies and tables and enumeratious of collateral lines of “all Israel,” to which the whole of the following seven chapters are devoted (1Ch 9:1). This second chapter leads off with the most important line of descent of the twelvethat of Judah. And the contents of this chapter do not exhaust the one line, which, on the contrary, stretches as far as to 1Ch 4:23. Within these limits there are just that amount of repetition (1Ch 2:3; 1Ch 4:1, etc.) and appearance of confusion which betoken the recourse of the compiler to various records and sources of in-formationthemselves sometimes but fragmentary, and probably to mere memory and the tradition that depends upon it.
The contents of this chapter are best mastered by noticing that they consist of:
1. The table of Israel’s twelve sons (1Ch 4:1, 1Ch 4:2).
2. The line of Judah to the stage where it branches into three great-grandsons (1Ch 4:3-9).
3. The line of Judah pursued through those three branches to a point manifestly significant in one, and presumably so in the others (1Ch 4:10 -55).
1Ch 2:1, 1Ch 2:2
1. TABLE OF ISRAEL‘S TWELVE SONS. The twelve sons of Israel, not in the order of age (cf. Ge 29:31-30:24; Gen 35:16-19), nor exactly in the order of children of wives as against those of handmaids (Gen 25:23-26), nor in that of the aged father’s dying blessing (Gen 49:1-33.), nor in that of Exo 1:2-4. It is the place of Dan which disturbs the fittest order, and Keil suggests that his place in this text is accounted for by Rachel’s desire that her handmaid’s child should be accounted her own; but surely this was not exceptional, but applied to all or most of such cases, and should have been far rather taken into consideration in any of the other lists than in this. However accounted for, the order islest, the six sons of the first wife Leah; secondly, the elder son of Rachel’s handmaid Bilhah; thirdly, the two sons of the loved wife Rachel; fourthly, the other son of Rachel’s handmaid Billah; lastly, the two sons of Zilpah, handmaid of Leah. As this order corresponds with nothing in our Old Testament, it may serve as one slight indication that the compiler of Chronicles was not dependent on these records alone. The Hebrew text and the Septuagint accord exactly with the Authorized Version here.
1Ch 2:3-9
2. THE LINE OF JUDAH, TO HIS THREE GREAT–GRANDSONS. The line of Judah is, with a well-known object, the first to be taken up, although Judah stands fourth of Israel’s sons. Judah has five sons: three, Er, Onan, Shelah, by a Canaanitess, the daughter of Shad; and two, Pharez and Zerah, by Tamar, his own daughter-in-law, under the circumstances described (Gen 38:6-30). There all these names are found in exact accord in the Authorized Version, in the Hebrew text, and in the Septuagint. The Septuagint Version, however (Gen 38:2), by an evident inaccuracy of translation, gives Shua as the name, not of the father, but of the daughter, . Parallel passages are also found (Gen 46:12; Num 26:19-22). Er and Onan died without issue, and the descendants of Shelah are not mentioned till we reach 1Ch 4:21-23. The line is now carried on by the twin sons of Tamar (1Ch 4:5, 1Ch 4:6). Pharez, with two sons, Hezron and Hamul (Gen 46:12; Rth 4:18), and Zerah, with five sons, Zimri (or Zabdi, Jos 7:1), Ethan, Heman, Calcol, Dara (or with many manuscripts, followed by the Targum, Syriac, and Arabic versions, Darda). If these last four names are not identical with those in 1Ki 4:31, they are not to be found in any available connection elsewhere, and the last two not at all. Upon this supposition, it is held by some that this very passage proves that the compiler drew on resources not possessed by us. The weight of evidence seems, however, largely in favour of the persons being the same. (See Gilbert Barrington’s ‘Old Testament Genealogies,’ 1:206-208, well summarized in art. “Darda,” Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary,’ for as competent a discussion of the question as the present data will allow.) It needs to be constantly remembered that an enumeration like the above, of five so-called sons, does not necessarily involve their being five brothers, although in this case it looks the more as though they were so, as it is said five of them in all
1Ch 2:7
We have then so far seven grandsons to Judah, when a new name, unmentioned before, is introducedCarmi. He is neither described as one of the seven grandsons nor as descended from any one of them, but unenviably enough is marked as the father of Acharlater form of Achauthe troubler of Israel. Jos 7:1-18 supplies the missing link, and states that Carmi is son of Zimri (Zabdi), one of the aforesaid seven grandsons. By the punishment of death, visited upon this Achar, with his sons and daughters (Jos 7:24, Jos 7:25), it may be presumed that the line of Judah through him became extinct.
1Ch 2:8
The line through Ethan, another of the seven grandsons, seems to stop with Azariah, a name found nowhere else.
1Ch 2:9
3. THE LINE OF JUDAH PURSUED THROUGH THE THREE BRANCHES OF HEZRON‘S SONS. The track of genealogy then returns upon Pharez, and to the name of Hezron, the most important by far of the seven grandsons. His three sons are announced, and, as beginning with the firstborn, so presumably in order of seniority. They are: (A), Jerahmeel; (B), Ram; (C), Chelubai.
1Ch 2:10-15
(B) Ram is taken first in order, at once to push on the lineage of Judah to the great landmark DAVID, who is reached at the seventh generation from Ram (Rth 4:19-22; Mat 1:3-5; Luk 3:31-33), his name being ranked last of seven brothers only, sons of Jesse.
1Ch 2:11
Salma, Hebrew ; but Rth 4:20, and in following verse . The variation of the first two of these forms has many parallels, as between Chronicles and the earlier Old Testament Scriptures.
1Ch 2:13-15
Give us what we have not elsewhere, the names of the fourth, fifth, and sixth sons of Jesse, viz. Nathaneel, Raddai (but see 1Ki 1:8), and Ozem. But, on the other hand, they make it appear that David was the seventh of seven, instead of (1Sa 14:10, 1Sa 14:11; 1Sa 17:12) the eighth of eight sons. The missing son, any way, belongs to the seventh place. The Syriac and Arabic versions have taken the Elihu of 1Ch 27:18, and put him in this place. Others, following the Septuagint, suppose this Elihu, if strictly a brother of David, to be Eliab, the oldest. The explanation of the absence of the name here may be that he died early and without issue, and would accordingly be the less wanted in a genealogical register.
1Ch 2:16, 1Ch 2:17
These verses do not say that David “begat” Zeruiah and Abigail, but that these two were sisters of the foregoing seven brethren. Light is thrown upon this by 2Sa 17:25, which says that Abigail was the daughter of one Nahash, and that Zeruiah was her sister. But it is to leave us in greater darkness as to who Nahath was: whether Nahath was another name for Jesse, or the name of Jesse’s wife, or the name of a former husband of Jesse’s wife, to whom she bore these two daughters before she became wife to Jesse, and that former husband possibly none other than the Ammonite king (2Sa 10:2)or whether none of these conjectures be near the truth, some of which on the face of them seem unlikely enough, is as yet unsettled. Meantime it is worth remembering that Zeruiah named one of her celebrated sons, and probably the eldest of them, Abishai, after Jesse, Ishai being the same as our Jesse; yet from the above premises it is taken that she was strictly sister of Abigail, and therefore was not really related to Jesse. The subject is treated interestingly under the various names in Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary.’ The husband of Zeruiah is given nowhere, while the husband of Abigail, hero called Jether the Ishmeelite, is, in the passage already referred to (2Sa 17:25), called Ithra (which is a slightly altered form of the name), an Israelite, with little doubt an error for Ishmaelite. In the same passage also her own name appears as , instead of , though many manuscripts have this latter.
1Ch 2:18-20
(C) Chelubai. The descendants of Caleb (Chelubai), placed third of Hezron’s sons, are next dealt with; but the subject is almost immediately interrupted by resumed reference to Hezron (1Ch 2:21-24), and by the table of Jemh-meel and his descendants (1Ch 2:25-41); after which the table of Caleb, apparently the same Caleb, is carried on (1Ch 2:42-49). Taking these broken portions, however, just as they come, we are immediately met by a series of uncertainties and surprises. 1Ch 2:18 is obscure in that it says Caleb had children by Azubah (the Hebrew construction also unusual), a wife, or indeed strictly a woman (not even using the ordinary formula “his wife”), and by Jerioth, of whom nothing is said; and the verse adds obscurity by saying, her sons are these, without plainly indicating to which woman reference is made. It may be safely presumed, however, from what follows, that Azubah is intended, though no other part of Scripture helps us By so much as a mention of the sons’ names to determine it certainly. Meantime one Hebrew manuscript and the Chaldee Paraphrase are found to omit the words “and by Jerioth.” The Vulgate, and the Syriac and Arabic versions, make Jerioth one of the childrenpossibly a daughterof Caleb and Azubah, and this view is supported by Kennicott and Houbigant (Barrington’s ‘Genealogies,’ 1:210). The tone of 1Ch 2:19 may certainly he held to offer some countenance to the assumption that either Jerioth’s name ought to appear as that of a child or not at all. The name Ephrath in this verse abounds with interest. The ancient name of the town of Bethlehem, and also apparently of a district round it, is the same word which is found here as the name of a woman. In either case it is more generally written , as even in the two other appearances of it in this very chapter. Two manuscripts, followed by two ancient editions, and apparently by the Vulgate, substitute aleph for the above final he. In Mic 5:1, Bethlehem is found united with Ephratah in one compound word. The mother Ephrath is here interesting for her descendants given, her son Hur, grandson Uri, and great-grandson Bezaleel. Further reference to these is made in verse 50.
1Ch 2:21-24
The first interruption to the record of Caleb’s posterity is now occasioned by a resumed reference to Hezron, who at the age of threescore took to wife (as it seems from 1Ch 2:24) Abiah, sister to Gilead, daughter of the eminent man Machir, who was Manasseh’s oldest son by an Aramitess concubine (1Ch 7:14). Two sons of Hezron by Abiah are given (the latter of them a posthumous child), but the elder having a son called Jair tracked, no doubt as one who became famous by the number of cities he took. He was thus connected on the father’s side with a great family of Judah, and on the mother’s with a great family of Manasseh. He is probably not the Jair of Jdg 10:3, with his “thirty sons, thirty ass colts, and thirty cities.” And is not of 2Sa 21:19; 1Ch 20:5. Evident stress is laid on his maternal descent. Thus (Num 32:41) he is styled son of Manasseh, and hence also the explanation of the last clause of verse 23, infra, all these belonged to the sons of Machir the father of Gilead. Some of the cities alluded to are the Havoth-Jair (Num 32:41; Deu 3:14; Jos 13:30), Englished as the “groups of dwellings of Jair,” on which see interesting note in Stanley’s ‘Sinai and Palestine’, vocabulary, pp. 526, 527. They lay in the trans-Jordanic district Trachonitis, the modern El-leyah and Jebel-Hauran. It is not possible to harmonize exactly the numbers of the cities given here with those in passages quoted above; nor is the translation of verse 23, Authorized Version, very certainly the correct one. E. Bertheau, in his ‘Die Bucher der Chronik erklart; 15. Kurzgef. exegetisches Handbuch. z. A.T.,’ translates, “And Geshur and Aram took the Havvoth-Jair from them with Kenath and her daughter-towns, sixty cities.” “Took” is supposed to mean here “retook,” or “recovered.” Though this suits the Hebrew syntax better, it does not suit so well our immediate context; nor have we any other information of such re, covering of them.
1Ch 2:23
Geshur was a small district between Argob and Bashan; and Aram, commonly translated Syria, i.e. the ancient Syria, viz. the territory of Damascus. Kenath, rechristened by its subduer Nobah (Num 32:42), and retaining this name at the time of Gideon, and Zeba and Sahnunnah subsequently vindicated the life of its old name, and regained it, replaced in the present day by Kenawat. And the towns thereof; Hebrew literally, her daughters; i.e. the small, subordinate groups of people (Num 21:25, “All the villages thereof,” literally, daughters). All these belonged to the sons of Machir, the father of Gilead, might perhaps be open to the translation, “All these were the possessions of Machir, the possessor of Gilead.”
1Ch 2:24
The remaining verse of this section brings another point of difficulty unsolved yet. No place Caleb-ephratah is known, and no sort of accounting for Hezron dying anywhere but in Egypt, whither he went with Jacob (Gen 46:12), is producible. The Vulgate has Ingressus est Caleb ad Ephratam, but our Hebrew text cannot be made to justify it, if for nothing else, for want of a preposition before “Ephrata.” This reading of the Vulgate has suggested to others that by a slight but still gratuitous alteration of our Hebrew text might be substituted for the preposition prefixed to the name of Caleb; but upon that showing we have to suppose that Caleb did leave Egypt on his own account and travel to Ephratah, and then there fails any strong connection between that fact and what is said about Abiah. Still, the explanation might receive some countenance from the fact that it is said that Abiah’s son became the fatheror founderof Tekoa, a place near Bethlehem, in South Judah (1Sa 30:14). Bertheau has at this point suggested that Caleb-ephratah, instead of being included in Neger-Caleb, may rather, in distinction from it, designate the northern portion of the territory of Caleb. The solution of the problem will probably not yield to anything but a justly restored text.
1Ch 2:25-41
We reach here the second interruption in the account of Caleb’s posterity. (A) Jerahmeel, though the eldest Hezronite son, has as yet been passed by in favour of Ram and in favour of Caleb, so far as regards part of his descendants. Jerahmeel himself is mentioned nowhere else, but his people collectively are (1Sa 27:10; 1Sa 30:29). On the other hand, this place alone supplies the lists of names, and we have not the aid of any collation. 1Ch 2:25 purports in the Authorized Version to give five sons of Jerahmeel by his first wife, of name not given. The absence of the conjunction “and,” however, in the Hebrew text before the last name, Ahijah, suggests that this may be the name of the first wife the presence of which seems greatly required by the contents of the next verse. Some particle being required, Le Clerc, accepting the suggestion of Junins and Tremellius, proposes to supply , and Bertheau the same preposition, but in a simpler form, prefixed to the name Ahijah (see Barrington’s ‘Genealogies,’ 1:180).
1Ch 2:26
For , one manuscript has , and another reht.
1Ch 2:28
One manuscript makes Nadab and Abishur two additional sons of Onam, by omitting the words and the sons of Shammai.
1Ch 2:29
, are the readings of various manuscripts in this verse.
1Ch 2:21-35
The Authorized Version is not justified in substituting children for the Hebrew “sons;” the object evidently being to make this statement reconcilable with 1Ch 2:34, which says that Sheshan had only daughters. The difficulty can be removed, possibly, by supposing that Ahlai died (yet see 1Ch 11:41), or that, at the time to which 1Ch 2:34 refers, only daughters were in question. Wall’s conjecture, that Ahlai of 1Ch 2:31 is the same with Attai of 1Ch 2:35, would have more probability if aleph were not the initial letter of the one, and ayin of the other. Still, as all the other “sons” of this passage mean sons strictly, it would be unlikely that sons of Sheshan only should mean “grandsons.” The genealogy now proceeds through Sheshan’s daughter, name not given (unless possibly Ahlai), married to his Egyptian servant Jarha, down to (1Ch 2:41) Elishama, at the twentieth generation from Jerahmeel. To this, however, the Septuagint, adds one generation more, . The Egyptian servant Jarha is not heard of elsewhere; that he was enfranchised before his marriage with Sheshan’s daughter is likely enough (Deu 23:8; 1Sa 30:11). The language of the end of 1Ch 2:33, These were the sons of Jerahmeel, would seem to exclude the following thirteen descendants of Jarha and Sheshan’s daughter from the genealogy. Yet this is scarcely likely to be the intention, which perhaps was satisfied with simply marking a distinction by the pause.
1Ch 2:36
The name Zabad throws considerable doubt on the opinion that no one of Jerahmeel’s descendants given in this genealogy can be found elsewhere in the Old Testament; for compare again 1Ch 11:41.
1Ch 2:38
So also compare Azariah with 2Ch 23:1. These two names are abundantly interesting here. Zabad, the tenth from Jerahmeel, or fourteenth from the patriarch Judah himself, brings us to the time of David, by exactly the same interval as seven other perfect genealogies, four of these having the very same number of steps, viz. fourteen, two having fifteen, and that of David himself having eleven steps. An analogous and equally interesting correspondence can be traced with the name Azariah. See the important art. “Zabad,” Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary;’ and its further remarks as to the evidence of the genealogy in the fact of its twenty-fourth and last name tallying well with the time of Hezekiah, the sixth king after Athaliah (1Ch 4:41).
1Ch 2:42-49
These verses are occupied with the resumption of descendants of Calebthe Caleb apparently of 1Ch 2:9 and 1Ch 2:18, though, this being so, the last clause in 1Ch 2:49, the daughter of Caleb, Achsa, will require accounting for. This statement would lead us to suppose that we were assuredly reading of Caleb the son of Jephunneh; but it cannot be so. The name of Caleb, with the questions gathering round it, will be best considered here. Of the nine times in which it occurs in this chapter, the mere duplicates (of 1Ch 2:20, 1Ch 2:46, 1Ch 2:48) may be at once counted off. The compound “Caleb-ephratah” of 1Ch 2:24 has been already dealt with. Nor need we for the present suppose 1Ch 2:50 to have any real meaning inconsistent with its apparent meaning, viz. that Caleb is the name of a grandson (son of Hut) as well as of the grandfather. There remain the occasions of the occurring of the word in 1Ch 2:9, 1Ch 2:18, 1Ch 2:42, 1Ch 2:49.
1. The first appearance, then, of the name in this chapter (1Ch 2:9) exhibits it in a form different from that in which it appears the other times in this chapter or elsewhere, viz. as , instead of (or once as a patronymic, 1Sa 25:3, ). The Vulgate follows the Hebrew, but the Septuagint has at once substituted Caleb. The Syriac Version has Salchi, and the Arabic Sachli, both of them, no doubt, mere transcribers’ errors through the mistake of a letter. This form “Chelubai” is, then, an , and no different account has yet been given of the name appearing thus on this one occasion. It may be described, with Lange (‘Comm. Old Testament,’ in loc.), as “adjectivus gentilis” to , which word, however, occur where it will, is never treated as a synonym with Caleb except by the Septuagint, and then but once (1Ch 4:11), making Lange’s further claim of three forms for the name of Caleb wrong. The name might be translated the “Cheluban” or “Chelubite.”
2. The Caleb called here first “Chelubai,” again “Caleb the son of Hezron,” and now “Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel,” some, and Keil among them, have endeavoured to identify with Caleb the son of Jephunneh. This latter is a well-known figure in history. He, together with Joshua, was among those who, departing from Egypt, were pursued of Pharaoh, and of all the host these two alone lived to enter into the promised land. This is enough to give him distinction and a prominent place before the eye. To this Caleb unmistakable reference is made in twenty-eight passages, in sixteen of which he is called “son of Jephunneh,” and in three of those sixteen “son of Jephunneh the Kenazite.” Now, he tells us himself (Jos 14:7) that he was forty years old in the seceded year after the Exodus. But it seems (Gen 46:12, Gen 46:26) that Hezron, grandson of Judah, and the father of the Caleb of this chapter, was, however young, one of those who went down into Egypt with Jacob, at a date, according to any chronology, which must render it impossible for any son of his to have been alive and only forty years of age at the time of the Exodus. This being so, either the statement already referred to, found at the close of verse 49, that “the daughter of Caleb was Achsa,” must be an interpolation from some ignorant transcriber’s marginal annotation, or, unlikely as it is, Caleb the son of Hezron and Caleb the son of Jephunneh both named a daughter Achsa. It is, moreover, likely enough that the frequent describing of Caleb the son of Jephuuneli in this style was occasioned by the desire to distinguish him from some other Caleb, not a contemporary, indeed, but already well known m a generation preceding but not too remote. Other considerations decidedly concur with this view: e.g. Ram is brother of Caleb the son of Hezron; he has a grandson, Nahshon, of great distinction, “a prince of the children of Judah,” whose sister Aaron married; he was the elect of the Judah tribe to assist Moses and Aaron in the first numbering of the people (Num 1:7). Great prominence is given to him (Num 7:12; Num 10:14). He was clearly (Mat 1:4; Luk 3:32) fifth in descent from Judah, in perfect agreement with the table of this chapter. Now, it was this grandson of the elder brother of Caleb who was contemporary with Caleb the son of Jephunneh. Similarly, the Bezaleel of this chapter (verse 20), a great-grandson of Caleb the Hezronite, is spoken of (Exo 31:1; Exo 35:30) at the same date exactly at which Caleb the son of Jephunneh says he was still but forty years of age
3. The identity of the Caleb of verse 50, son of Hut, with Caleb the son of Jephuuneh is supposed by some, but is not clear. It appears to be asserted, without explanation, in the arts. “Caleb” and “Ephrath,” signed A. C. H; Smith’s ‘Bible Dictionary,’ though in the second part of the latter article it is alluded to as only possible. On the other hand, it may rather be that Caleb the son of Jephunneh, instead of being identical with this Caleb the son of Hur, is so called in order to distinguish him from this latter as a contemporary. Again, it has been happily conjectured (‘Speaker’s Commentary,’ in loc.) that just as verse 33 closes the table of Jerahmeel with “These were the sons of Jerahmeel,” so verse 49 should close the table of Caleb (verse 42) with the words, These were the Boris of Caleb. With a slight alteration, verse 50 would then begin The sons of Hur, etc. This is, however, only conjecture. Verse 42, then, must be considered to give us another family of Caleb, i.e. a family by another wife, of name not given, just possibly the Jerioth unaccounted for in verse 18. The first statement lauds us in perplexity. Mesha () is the firstborn (i.e. by the wife or woman in question), and the founder of Ziph. And amid some omission or corruption of text, we are then confronted with the words, and the sons of Marsehah () the father (or again, perhaps founder) of Hebron. The reading of the Septuagint gives Mareshah in both of these passages, and may come from a Hebrew text that we have not. The substitution could, however, scarcely be accounted for as a mere clerical error, considering both the omission of a resh and the replacing of an he with an ayin. The sentence refuses at present any treatment except the unsatisfactory one of pure conjecture. But employing this, it may be noted that the omitting of the words, “the sons of,” before Mareshah would most help to clear the verse of confusion. In this and following verses, Ziph, Hebron, Tappuah, Jorkoam, and Beth-zur, are all names of places certainly, whether or not they are all of persons.
1Ch 2:46-49
Give the names (the first of which appears as that of a man also, next verse and 1Ch 1:33) of two additional concubines of Caleb, and of their descendants.
1Ch 2:47
Offers us another name, Jahdai, not to be accounted for with any certainty. It is not linked to the context, and nothing is known of the six sons assigned to the person owning it. That Gazez occurs twice in the previous verse is remarkable, and suggestive, possibly, of mistake. The Septuagint omits altogether the clause in which it is found the second time. Houbigant translates, “Porro Haran genuit Jahdai,” and so summarily removes the difficulty from his way (Barrington’s ‘Genealogies,’ 1:210). Hiller (‘Onomasticon,’ S.) would make it the same name as Moza, but without any pretence of argument. A more reasonable suggestion than this might be that Jahdai is the name of yet another concubine of Caleb (Lange, ‘O.T. Comm.,’ in loc.).
1Ch 2:49
Machbenah is an (for Madmannah and Gibea, Jos 15:31, Jos 15:57). The last sentence of this verse is treated above.
1Ch 2:50-55
The opening sentence of these verses has also been already discussed. It may be now added (see Keil, ‘Commentary,’ in loc.) that some would understand the words as though they meant, These were the sons of Caleb, in the descending line of Hur, Ephratah’s firstborn. This rendering is got at by altering “the son of Hut” into “the sons of Hur,” which seems to have been the reading of the Septuagint manuscripts, and which, at all events, their rendering has. The remainder of 1Ch 2:50, with the following four, give three sons of Caleb:
1. Shobal, prince of Kirjath-jearim (city of woods; Jos 9:17; Jos 18:15; Jos 15:9, Jos 15:60; cf. Jos 18:14), on the border-hind of Judah and Benjamin, and about ten miles from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus (Nicopolis). It is to be identified, almost with certainty, with the modern Kuriet-el-Enab. Other references of exceeding interest are 1Sa 6:21; 1Sa 7:2; 2Sa 6:5; Ezr 2:25; Neh 7:29; 1Ch 13:6; 2Ch 1:4; Jer 26:20; Psa 132:6. This Shobal (verse 52) had two sons, Haroeh, i.e. Reaiah (1Ch 4:5), and the progenitor, whatever his name, of half of the people called Manahethites (Authorized Version)a form probably suggested by the Masoretic pointing of verse 54or Chatsi-hammenon-choth (Hebrew text), which Gesenius treats as a proper name, and which means “the midst of quiet places” (Psa 23:2), from which comes the patronymic of the next verse but one (Barrington, ‘Genealogies,’ 1:213). From the Kirjath-jearim family were derived (verse 53), the Ithrites, Puhites, Shumathites, and Mishraites, of none of whom, except probably the Ithrites (2Sa 23:38; 1Ch 11:40), do we find other mention; and from the Mishraites again were derived two offshoots, the Zareathites and Eshtaulites, the towns of both of whom are with great probability to be tracked (Jos 15:33; Jos 19:41; Jdg 13:25; Jdg 18:2). They were situated in that part of Judah called the “low” country, or the Shefelah, stretching from Joppa to Gaza on the Mediterranean.
2. Salma, prince of Bethlehem. The so-called “sons” here attributed to him, six in number, including Bethlehem, evidently betoken families rather than the names of individuals. The town Netophah (Ezr 2:21; Neh 7:26) gave the gentile noun Netophathites (2Sa 23:28; Jer 40:8). Ataroth, the house of Joab (i.e. “crowns” of the house of Joab), is not mentioned elsewhere; but the reason of its being distinguished thus may be due to the fact that there was another Ataroth of Gad (Num 32:3, Num 32:34), and yet another of Ephraim (Jos 14:5; Jos 18:13). The Zorites () Gesenius thinks to be another gentile form from with , but of them we do not read elsewhere. Verse 55 should not have been separated from the last word of the previous verse. The families of the scribes is linked on by the conjunction and (which has coupled the former sons of Salma also two and two) with “the Zorites.” This sixth set of descendants from Salma is exhibited to us in the shape of a trio of scribe families, the heads of which will have been, presumably, Tira, Shimea, and Suchah. They are said to have dwelt at Jabez, a place not ascertained; and scarcely to be put into connection with the Jabez of 1Ch 4:9. The Vulgate has translated the names of these three families: Canentes et resonantes et in tabernaculis commorantes;” and Bertheau advocates the interpretation. These families, it appears, were not purely of Judah; but very interesting it is that, though of the people whose land and possessions were to yield to the descendants of Abraham (Gen 15:18-21), yet friendship and intermarriage had found them apparently a lasting place in Judah (Jdg 1:16), while Saul was careful to urge them to save themselves when he was about to smite the Amalekites (1Sa 15:6). Though nothing is known of the link of connection given here in the name Hemath (of which the Vulgate gives the rendering, Qui venerunt de celose patris), yet the house of the Rechabites is well known (2Ki 10:15, 2Ki 10:23; Jer 35:2, Jer 35:5, Jer 35:18; and cf. 2Sa 4:2, particularly 3).
3. In verse 51 Hareph () only here; though , found Neh 7:24; Neh 10:20; Ezr 2:18, may possibly he connected with it. There is nothing further said of any people derived from him except that he was father of Beth-gader. The identification of this place is not certain. Gesenius thinks it perhaps the same with Gederah (Jos 15:36), but it is more probably the Gedor of same chapter (fifty-eighth verse), on the road between Hebron and Jerusalem.
Homilies By W. Clarkson
1Ch 2:1-55.-The human family.
These verses present a series of family pictures; they remind us that “God setteth the solitary in families” (Psa 68:6). By thus ordering human life he has provided for the maximum of happiness and of spiritual well-being. We are reminded of
I. ITS VARIOUS RELATIONSHIPS. Here we have husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter, brother and sister. How excellent is God’s loving-kindness in thus binding our hearts and lives together in such happy and sacred bonds, refining our souls and multiplying our joys!
II. ITS VARIOUS DISPOSITIONS. In some cases we have parents and children complete; in others, parents without children at all (1Ch 2:30); in others, daughters without sons; in others, sons without daughters; in another case a child born alter its father’s death (1Ch 2:24); in another a servant elevated to a son-in-law (1Ch 2:35). What almost endless varieties there are in the circumstances and relations in which our family life is found!
III. ITS PRICELESS ADVANTAGE TO OUR RACE.
1. It is the guardian of a nation’s purity; the morals of a people are high or low as it respects or disregards the family bond.
2. It shields young life from the perils by which it would otherwise be corrupted.
3. It calls forth from maturity the best virtues which manhood and womanhood can show. We are thus led to
IV. THE DISCIPLINE IT PROVIDES FOR EACH STAGE OF LIFE.
1. In childhood it nurtures obedience, submission.
2. In youth, industry, concession.
3. In young manhood, hardihood; in young womanhood, delicacy of feeling.
4. In maturity, patience, self-command, unselfishness, mutual concession, intercessory prayer.
V. ITS BEARING ON HUMAN PIETY. We could not have known and trusted and loved God as our heavenly Father, but for human parentage; we could not have learned how to cultivate the right spirit for reception into and acceptance within the kingdom, but for human childhood (Mat 18:2); we could not have known how best to regard our fellows and feel toward them, but for human brotherhood (Mat 23:8).C.
Homilies By J.R. Thomson
1Ch 2:7.-A transgressor and troubler.
In most instances in the genealogies of this book, the names of the successive members of the families of Israel are mentioned without remark. But now and then a memorable personage is named, and some trait of his character, some incident in his life, is recorded, or rather referred to, by the chronicler. This is the case even when the record is one of shame and infamy. So is it With Achan.
I. Achan was A TRANSGRESSOR. In transgression much is involved: e.g. Law. A line must be drawn in order that it may be passed over. A commandment must be given before it can be violated. In the case of Achan, the law was published with authority. Covetousness. Before there can be sin there must be lust. Desires are divinely implanted, and evil does not lie in their existence, but in their unlawful gratification. Temptation. There must be some circumstance without eliciting and fostering the desire within. Men often blame the temptation, but unreasonably, for the evil is in themselves, not in the innocent and often unconscious occasion of their transgression. Yielding of the will when tempted. Without this, all that goes before is harmless; it is here that the harm begins. If temptation is resisted, virtue is strengthened and character is improved; if the will succumb, moral deterioration ensues. The latter was the ease with Achan. Hiding of sin. This will often follow upon transgression. There is a hope that it may be concealed from men, perhaps even from God. Conscience of sin. This is divinely appointed, to lead the sinner to repentance and reformation. Yet it may prove, if it fail in this mission, a scourge to chastise, awakening remorse and fear.
II. Achan was A TROUBLER. The trouble which follows upon sin is not confined to the sinner. In the case before us all Israel was punished because of one man’s sin. Such is the constitution of society, that this is often seen, the chastisement of many for the transgression of one. Trouble may lead to inquiry, and inquiry to discovery. This happened in Achan’s case by supernatural agency; but the same happens every day by means which appear natural. Discovery may lead to confession, and confession may be followed by punishment. So it was with Achan. And there are cases where there seem to be no means of avoiding the consequences of transgression. Yet the sinner must remember that we have been assured that “if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Trouble may be followed by Divine acceptance and favour. There seems something harsh in Joshua’s language to Achan, “Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day.” Yet, when the transgressor was removed and the transgression was put away from Israel, the Lord received his people again into his favour.
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. Before transgression, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”
2. After transgression, the trouble that comes upon the sinner is sent in mercy.
3. Confession and repentance, and faith in Christ, are necessary in order to reconciliation and acceptance.T.
1Ch 2:55.–The families of the scribes.
These Books of Chronicles may have been the work of Ezra, the prince of scribes. In any case, they bear traces of the handiwork of that profession. As learned men, whose learning was devoted to the exposition of the Law of Moses, they were peculiarly suitable to preserve the records of the theocracy.
I. Observe the OCCUPATION of the scribes. It was to study and to expound the sacred books of the nation, to read these writings in public, and to writeprobably to write copies of the Law, and commentaries upon its letter and spirit. The civil and sacred Law were alike their theme. All legal and religious documents were entrusted to their care.
II. Remark the PROFESSIONAL POSITION Of the scribes. The text speaks of “the families of the scribes.” Occupations have a tendency to transmit themselves from father to son. Hereditary pursuits are observable in all communities. Traditions and habits are thus maintained and perpetuated. These learned Hebrew families seem to have dwelt in certain fixed places, forming, it may be, colleges of studious, scholarly, literary men.
III. Notice the GROWTH AND PROGRESS AND HISTORY Of the scribes. As a class they date from the close of the Captivity; and from that time onward they appear to have exercised great and growing influence over the national life and religion. In the time of our Saviour they were evidently a very important class of the community. In their two gradesthe lower, the interpreters of the classic Hebrew into the colloquial Aramaic; the higher, the doctors learned in the Pentateuchthey supplied to Israel much of the intellectual and moral element in the national life. Jesus admitted the excellence of their work when he denominated his ministers “scribes instructed unto the kingdom of heaven;” he pointed out their defects when he required of his followers a higher righteousness than theirs. And the Evangelists contrast the professional formalism of the Jewish scholars with the freshness and authority of the Great and Divine Teacher.
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. A literary profession may be of great service to the cause of religion. Ignorance is a foe to truth. Christianity will be the more appreciated the more it is studied, the more the light of cultivated intellects is brought to bear upon it.
2. A profession devoted to the advancement of religious learning is not without its perils. There is danger lest the form displace the substance, and the letter the spirit. True and fervent piety alone can correct these tendencies and avert these perils.T.
Homilies By R. Tuck
1Ch 2:1.–Jacob-Israel.
Mistake is often made concerning Jacob, and his character and conduct are very imperfectly estimated. He is set in contrast with the open-hearted, impulsive, and generous Esau, to his great disadvantage. But we forget that we are able to estimate Jacob’s character more fully because the process of his moral and spiritual training, in the Divine providential leadings, is detailed, and we therefore have so much of his badness revealed to us in the process. We do not really know Esau as we know Jacob. The accounts that have reached us concerning him only deal with what appears to be attractive and good, and we see very few indications of the badness which his complete story might bring to light. Jacob is set before us as a man under immediate Divine training, and something like the accomplishment of one great stage of the Divine purpose is indicated in the bestowment of the new name, Israel. The meaning of the two names Jacobthe supplanter, Israelthe prince of God, should be given; and the circumstances connected with the affixing of each name should be recalled. They serve to note the marked features of the two distinct portions of Jacob’s life.
I. JACOB‘S FIRST NAMETHE SUPPLANTER. This declares the infirmity of his natural disposition. It is clear, from the record given in Genesis, that he began life under very serious disabilities, heavily weighted. The doctrine of heredity finds forcible illustration. He inherited his mother’s dispositiona tendency to scheme, to outwit others, to take advantage of them, to trip them up, to get one’s own good even at the expense of other people’s loss; the planning, bargaining, keen-dealing spirit. This inherited evil disposition so influences him that he “entraps his brother, he deceives his father, he makes a bargain even in his prayer; in his dealings with Laban, in his meeting with Esau, he still calculates and contrives; he distrusts his neigh-hours he repels, even in his lesser traits, the free confidence that we cannot withhold from the patriarchs of the elder generation.” What he might have become but for the grace of God is well indicated in Dean Stanley’s description of the ordinary Arab sheikh: “In every respect, except that which most concerns us, the likeness is complete between the Bedouin chief of the present day and the Bedouin chief who came from Chaldaea nearly four thousand years ago. The more we see the outward conformity of Abraham and his immediate descendants to the godless, grasping, foulmouthed Arabs of the modern desert, nay, even their fellowship in the infirmities of their common state and country, the more we shall recognize the force of the religious faith which has raised them from that low estate to be the heroes and saints of their people.” To add to Jacob’s natural disabilities, he was the favourite child of his mother, and, for long years, was placed under her influence and the persuasion of her mischievous example. This tended to remove the sense of evil from his scheming and deceiving ways. And circumstances seemed to favour him; his brother’s hunger and his father’s blindness seemed to be providential openings for carrying out his mother’s plan for securing the birthright and the blessing. So often we deceive ourselves with the idea that Providence helps us to do what we, in our mere wilfulness, intend to do. All we can say of Jacob, under his first name, is that there is force of character, if only it can be toned aright; and there is an interest in religious things, a religious thoughtfulness, which gives promise of a true and noble life when he has passed through a long period of trial and sorrow and discipline. With all his infirmities, and with that sad absence of simplicity and uprightness in him, there is yet the making of the good man. And so, even in these first stages, his story carries lessons of hopefulness to those who feel deeply the natural infirmity of their characters, or have to do with the training of young people who are heavily weighted with inherited infirmities.
II. JACOB‘S SECOND NAMETHE PRINCE OF GOD. This declares the possible triumph of Divine grace over natural infirmity. We must connect it, not with the incident of meeting Esau only, but with Jacob’s whole life. It seals the Divine training, and affirms Jacob’s conversion from the self-willed and self-seeking spirit. “Jacob has gone through a long training and chastening from the God of his fathers, to whose care and guidance he had given himself (at Bethel); he suffers heavily, but he learns from that he suffered.” Trace the stages of the Divine dealing. The force of the scene of Mahanaim in completing the Divine work is suggestively given by F. W. Robertson: “His name was changed from Jacob to Israel, because himself was an altered man. Hitherto there had been something subtle in his charactera certain cunning and crafta want of breadth, as if he had no firm footing upon reality. Jacob was tender and devout and grateful for God’s pardon, and only half honest still. But this half-insincere man is brought into contact with the awful God, and his subtlety falls from himhe becomes real at once. No longer Jacobthe supplanter, but Israelthe prince of God a larger, more unselfish namea larger and more unselfish manhonest and true at last.” This, then, becomes the great and searching question for us all: not, “What are we in our inherited tendencies and natural dispositions?” but, “What are we now, and what are we becoming, in all holy triumph over inward infirmities and outward foes, through yielding ourselves fully to the leadings and teachings and sanctifyings of Divine grace? And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” R.T.
1Ch 2:3.–Divine judgment on individual sin.
Very little is known of Er. The account in Genesis (Gen 38:7) is as brief as that given in the Chronicles. Yet it sets clearly before us a case of early death, probably a sudden and violent death, and it declares to us that, in this particular instance, the death, and the manner of the death, were immediate judgments on personal transgression. There is a strong tendency to assume individual sin as the cause of calamities and so-called accidents, but our Lord taught us that we cannot always, or necessarily, trace such a connection. It may be so, but it may not be so; and we, in Christian charity, had better leave the discovery of the connection in God’s own hands (see Luk 13:1-5). Still, we should be ready to learn the lessons which God may design to teach us, when he is pleased to give us illustrative cases in his Word. Oftentimes we find the Divine recognition and judgment of social and national sins illustrated. The old divine bids us remember that “God can only punish nations, as such, in this world; he can punish individuals in this world and the next.” Israel is, as a nation, the subject of frequent Divine judgments, and Israel is bidden observe how Divine judgments fall on the guilty nations around her. But as this feature of the Divine dealings is set forth so prominently and so constantly, there is some danger of our assuming that Divine judgments, as executed here on earth, do not concern the individual; and that God may be said directly to govern the race, but not the man. Such a delusion would tend to nourish human wilfulness and pride, and still more completely separate men from God; and, therefore, we have men’s personal sins, and the immediate Divine judgment on those sins, impressively narrated.
I. ER‘S SIN WAS SOME PERSONAL ACT OF WRONG–DOING. Exactly what it was we are not told, but we know the ways in which men nowadays transgress God’s laws and insult the Divine honour. There are acts of wilful disobedience and rebellion, acts of bodily self-indulgence, and acts of violence and cruelty toward others. We have to see that this evil of Er’s was distinctly personal. He did not merely share in the errors, or follies, or sins of his age, in a blind and heedless way; he made wicked ways for himself, and wrought evil in his own wilfulness. Therefore the Divine observation rested upon him as a man who strove to set himself against God.
II. ER‘S SIN REVEALED A HOPELESSLY CORRUPTED NATURE. It was such a fruitage as could only come out of a corrupt tree. Distinguish between the one sin into which man may be tempted; even the good man may be “drawn aside and enticed,” “overtaken in a fault;” and the continuing in sin, which indicates the love for it, and the deteriorating influence it has exerted on mind and heart. A time may come for the man (as Er), or for the nation (as Sodom), when remedial agencies cease to be of avail, and then they can but be “cut down.” Illustrate from Pharaoh, with the hardened heart, from King Saul, and from the expression used in Hosea (Hos 4:17), “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone.”
III. ER‘S SIN BROUGHT UPON HIMSELF DIVINE JUDGMENT. This is briefly but forcibly intimated in the words, “and he slew him.” His early and sudden and violent death, was no disease and no accident. It was direct Divine judgment. God deals with the individual exactly as with the hopelessly corrupted world and the utterly degraded Sodom. Life on earth is forfeited it’ it is so shamefully abused. Discuss the question how far we may recognize calamities reaching individuals as Divine judgment on their personal transgressions. In every age there are open and notorious cases, e.g. Ananias and Sapphira. We may say that it is quite possible for any accident to be a judgment; but it may be a judgment on a bad system, and the sufferer may not be the direct cause. Impress God’s constant inspection of individual conduct and character.R.T.
1Ch 2:7.-Sinners are troublers.
Achar is but a modernized form of the familiar Achan (Jos 7:25). The story of this man is given so fully in the early records, and is here so definitely recalled, that we may be sure some important and permanent lessons were taught by it, and it may be still for “our instruction, on whom the ends of the world are come.” The narrative should be fully detailed. Bring out that Achan’s sin was at once self-will, disobedience, covetousness, and sacrilege. Explain that the one condition of Divine blessing for Israel was entire and unquestioning loyalty to the Divine will. And there is no other condition of blessing now. That will might oppose seemingly right feelings; and this brings us the more subtle and anxious testings of our loyalty, e.g. Abraham’s offering Isaac. That will would necessarily oppose all covetous feeling. The man who wants to get for self will ever find it hard to accept God’s will and way for him. But the covetous man who is a member of a community not only brings trouble on himself, but on others who may be related to him.
I. THIS SINNER‘S SIN. Set out its public character, in view of Joshua’s public proclamation. Show its aggravations, as committed directly against the known will of God.
II. THIS SINNER‘S SIN BROUGHT TROUBLE ON HIMSELF. As sin always must do. Here the sorrow of feeling himself to be the cause of national disaster; the penalty of his own forfeited life; and the misery of knowing that his family must suffer for his sin, and his very name be blotted out of the national records. As is ever the case with the covetous, Achan might glory over what he had gained, until it could be revealed to him what he had lost; then the gain could only appear to be utterly worthless and hopelessly ruinous, a millstone hung round his neck to drown him in the sea. Compare what Judas Iscariot gainedthirty pieces of silver; and what he lostlife and hope and Christ,his all. But the point which is specially called up to our remembrance is that
III. THIS SINNER‘S SIN BROUGHT TROUBLE ON OTHERS. SO he is known as the “troubler of Israel.” Set out the trouble that came upon Israel. They were grievously smitten before their foes. Also the trouble that came upon Joshua. He was humbled in the dust, filled with fears, and driven to God in agonizing intercessions. But even more terribly Achan’s sin brought trouble upon his own family, just as the drunkard and the licentious and the dishonest now drag down into their ruin those they profess to love. “Not Achan alone is called forth to death, but all his family, all his substance. The actor alone does not smart with sacrilege; all that concerns him is enwrapped in the judgment. God’s first revenges are so much the more fearful because they must be exemplary.” On the penalty of a man’s wrong-doing covering and including those related to him, Archbishop Whitgift has this figure: “The eagle that stole a coal from the altar thereby set her nest on fire, which consumed both her young eagles and herself that stole it.” We recognize that, if men are linked together in family and social life, it is well that, in God’s providence, they should bear one another’s burdens, share one another’s disabilities, and suffer one another’s woes. In such a case as Achan’s we have but God doing, by direct command, what he is always doing in the orderings of Divine providence. No man’s sin can ever stand aloneit must involve others in its consequences; and in this its hatefulness is revealed and a due fear of it is wrought in our minds. We should not so much hesitate to sin if we could ensure the limitation of the consequences to ourselves. But our sin must make us troublers. Even if the sin be forgiven, the issues must still go on. Then what a sublime idea we may gain of the redemption which God proposes I It deals with us for forgiveness and cleansing, but it also goes on after all the issues of human sin, and will not rest until the whole world is fully delivered, recovered, and saved.R.T.
1Ch 2:11.–Lessons from the story of Boaz.
The Book of Ruth is preserved to us as a picture of family and social life in the disorderly times of the judges. Both Ruth and Naomi have been made the frequent subject of public teaching; but Boaz stands out with sufficient prominence in the narrative to justify our fixing attention on him. Give the story, and especially the gleaning customs of those olden times; the kindly relations of masters and labourers; the customs of seeking protection from the family goel, or avenger; of confirming covenants by the gift of a shoe; and of conducting matters of business in the open space within the city gates. Fully explain the Eastern law of the goel. We may find illustrated in the conduct of Boaz
I. THE CONSIDERATENESS OF THE TRUE GENTLEMAN. See his gentle and considerate treatment of the poor gleaner, and his gentle dealing with her when she claimed his protection. The essence of the Christian gentleman is considerateness for the feelings and wishes of others, and a gentle way of doing all things, even hard and painful things. Find beautiful illustrations in the tender considerateness of the Lord Jesus Christ; and compare Paul’s address to the elders at Miletus, and the tone of the Epistle to the Philippians.
II. THE RESPONSIVENESS TO ANOTHER‘S TRUST. It is always the mark of the good man that he loves to be trusted, and readily responds to trust. So Boaz did when Ruth put herself under his protection. The Lord Jesus always looked for faithtrust; and opened his best treasures for the opened, trusting heart.
III. THE LOYALTY TO THE SENSE OF DUTY. Shown in his taking up Ruth’s case at once, and earnestly, and making himself liable for all that was involved in the vindication of her rights. Then work out how Divine benedictions ever follow right character and conduct. Ruth and Boaz both get their reward. The “right” may not always disclose its issues at once. They often seem painfully delayed, but, if we follow on, right is sure to lead to practical blessing. Right never yet led wrong; and good never yet finally issued in evil.R.T.
1Ch 2:13.-The character of Jesse.
Biographies usually make much of the parental connections and ancestral relations of their hero. It is even discussed whether the special genius of a person is to be traced to his father or to his mother. In the earlier Scriptures the mother’s name and character are seldom given; but in the time of the later kings the mother’s name is preserved with care. The importance of hereditary connections may concern both the intellectual forces of the mind and the moral qualities making up the character. There is the heritage of goodness as well as of greatness; and, therefore, St. Paul thanks God that Timothy stands in the third generation of marked faith and piety (2Ti 1:5). Almost nothing is known of the mother of David, and the absence of information has led to strange conjecture; Dean Stanley curiously suggesting that she may have been previously a wife or concubine of one Nahash, possibly an Ammonite king, who under some circumstances not detailed became a second wife of Jesse, and by him the mother of David. All that the narrative suggests is that David was much younger than his brothers, and the child of Jesse’s old age. He is introduced to us as conversing with Samuel on the occasion of the anointing of David (1Sa 16:1-23.); as caring for the wants of his children while they were away from homo in the army of Saul (1Sa 17:1-58.); and as the object of David’s special care when the personal enmity of Saul put his relatives, as well as David himself, in peril (1Sa 22:3, 1Sa 22:4). The incident in which the personal character of Jesse is most fully indicated is that of sending David with a present to his sons in the army; and this suggests that he was a thoughtful and affectionate father, and permits us to trace something of David’s remarkable family affection to his paternity. He may therefore serve to introduce the subject of paternal relationships and duties, and the rewards which those may find in the career and virtue of their children who have not been themselves remarkable for anything save for being good fathers. The Divine recognition of faithfulness in this precise office and relation is indicated in God’s commendation of Abraham (Gen 18:19), “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.”
I. FATHERLY LOVE FINDS FITTING EXPRESSION IN WISE RULE AND RESTRAINTS. Jesse seems to have had such authority. His sons, though of full age, promptly come and go at his bidding. He appears to have had his household fully under control, appointing each member his place and work. The well-being of families depends on the firmness of the father’s rule. The first conceptions of right, and of the duties of submission and obedience, happily come to us associated with our reverence for, and affection for, our father. And worthy fulfilment, in this respect, of the paternal duties carries to our children worthy ideas of the righteousness and love of “our Father who is in heaven.”
II. FATHERLY LOVE CAN MAKE HIGH SACRIFICES. Illustrated in Jesse’s sending his sons to the army in the time of national peril. How much he felt their danger is seen in his anxiety to know of their welfare while on the battle-field. Such sacrifices have often been required of parents in times of national danger, and similar sacrifices in quieter spheres, especially in devoting sons to missionary work. Show that to the true parent such sacrifices are made with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow.
III. FATHERLY LOVE FINDS ITS REWARD IN THE CHILDREN‘S CARE; as Jesse’s life was saved by David when Saul’s enmity put the family in peril. Loving children have no greater joy than that of caring for and tending their aged parents who have toiled and suffered so much and so long for them. See our Lord’s care of his mother from his cross.R.T.
1Ch 2:20.–Artistic gifts finding religious spheres.
(For the earlier references to Bezaleel, see Exo 31:2; Exo 35:30; Exo 36:1, Exo 36:2; Exo 37:1.) Explain the precise endowment of this man and his companion, and the assertion of his call by God, who specially “filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.” It has been said that “their work was to be only that of handicraftsmen. Everything that they had to do was prescribed in strict and precise detail. There was to be no exercise for their original powers of invention nor for their taste.” But this appears to be a needless limitation of their mission, especially as we are told that they were called to “devise cunning works, to work in gold,” etc.; and, however minute patterns of artistic work may be, even this worthy carrying out makes demand on artistic faculty and taste. We are rather disposed to give Bezaleel credit for designing much of the ornamentation, and elaborating the details of a general sketch furnished by Moses. It is curious to note that, in a mistaken apprehension of the commandment (Exo 20:4), the Jews would not cultivate either the arts of painting or sculpture. This may have been a safeguard to them under the temptations of surrounding idolatry, but it seriously limited their culture as a nation, and possibly made their idolatrous love of images and aesthetic worship the more intense when once the barriers were broken down. The Divine call and endowments of Bezaleel are the Divine protest against the neglect of those artistic faculties which are an essential part of man’s composite nature, as God has been pleased to create it. These faculties have their own place, their right place; and it is at the peril of an imperfect and one-sided culture that we, on the one hand, neglect them, and, on the other hand, push them into an exaggerated place.
I. THE MISSION OF THE ARTS IN HUMAN LIFE. Take illustrations from the arts of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, and show how they bear on the refinement of human life. Each holds out an ideal standard of purity and beauty, and seeking for absolute grace of form materially aids in securing real goodness and purity and truth. Illustrate by the influence of works of art in our homes as aids to the culture of family life. They also bear directly upon the pleasure of human life. For most of us the days must be spent in dull, grinding toil, which wears out the brightness and romance of our spirits. Our real world is bard and depressing. It is of the utmost concern to us that we may pass into an ideal world created by the imagination, and find pleasure in its winsome and joyous scenes. The arts take us into another world, and bring to the earth-toilers the pleasures of a paradise. Evidently true of music and poetry, really true of all.
II. THE MISSION OF THE ARTS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. Strangely in this sphere we still dread their influence. Yet the decorations of even the tabernacle and temple reproach us, and much more David’s elaborate efforts to secure the “beautiful” and the “pleasing” in the temple-worship. Explain that the arts serve in religion the one great end of keeping the ideal and the ideally perfect ever before us, and so they become a perpetual uplifting inspiration, surrounding us ever with the symbols and the suggestions of the Divine and eternal. They are for us the “figures of the true.”
III. THE NECESSARY LIMITATION OF THE ARTISTIC IN THE HIGHER AND RELIGIOUS SPHERES. The creations of art must never be sought for themselves, or they become virtual idols. They may only be symbols of realities, and handmaids to truths. As a practical conclusion, it may be shown that a man is not responsible for other gifts than those with which he is personally entrusted, but he is bound to be fully loyal to God in the use of those he has. Sooner or later in life, every man who wants to be faithful will discover his faculty and find his sphere.R.T.
1Ch 2:22, 1Ch 2:23.-The prowess of Jair.
The story of this man is given in Num 32:41; Deu 3:14; Jos 13:30. From the repeated mention of him we may assume that he was a remarkable man for military genius, and was in so large a degree successful in his warlike enterprises as to stand out before the ages as a prominent example of the warlike endowment, and its place in the Divine purposes. The brief notice of this man suggests for our considerationThe consecration to God of the military talent. We cannot accept fully the facts of human history without recognizing the Divine gift of the genius of the warrior. Different views are held on the righteousness of war. From the Christian standpoint all offensive war must be at once and entirely condemned, but defensive warand aid to those called to defensive warappears to be fully consistent with Christian principles. Still, we shall unfeignedly rejoice when the principle of arbitration can be universally adopted, and the “nations learn war no more.” It is, even in its best forms, a terrible human scourge and evil. But, whatever our view of it may be, history keeps her testimony, and declares that, in the long story of our race, war has been one of the important agencies used by God, and overruled by him, to the accomplishment of his gracious ends; and that he has, again and again, raised up men who had “war’ for their life-mission, and the military endowment as their precise trust. There have been the Joshuas, the Davids, the Maccabees, the Marlboroughs, and the Wellingtons, etc. Times and circumstances have made war the only possible agency for the punishing of wrong and the deliverance and confirmation of the right. Still, we should distinctly observe that warfare is the creation of man’s lust of power and dominion, his ambition to be supreme; and that the “God of peace” does butif we may so sayfit, temporarily, into the circumstances thus created, until he can get fully established his kingdom of righteousness in which war will be unknown.
I. THE DISTINCTIVE MILITARY GIFT. It is the gift of command over other men finding one particular mode of expression. This is the essence of it, but it is combined with the constructive faculty, the power of organization, courage, bodily skill, quickness of invention, etc.all, it may be pointed out, endowments which may find other spheres than battle-fields. Illustrate by the devotion of F. W. Robertson’s soldierly gifts to the service of the Church, and by the gift of ruling men found in the heads of large mills and factories.
II. THE LOYALTY THAT GUIDES THE USE OF THE MILITARY GIFTS. It is characteristic of the soldier that he is loyal to his king, and this loyalty finds expression in instant and unquestioning obedience. So the soldier among us is a plea urging us to maintain similar relations to our Lord, who is the “King of kings.” So far as we can see, it would be a loss to the moral health of a nation if the example of soldierly loyalty and obedience were removed. St. Paul was essentially a loyal soldier. When a command came from his Lord, he tells us, “Immediately we conferred not with flesh and blood.”
III. THE WITNESS TO VIRTUE AND DUTY THAT IS MADE BY MILITARY MEN. Lord Nelson’s words embody the witness all soldiers make. We must work for, suffer for, and, if need be, die for, duty. “England expects that every man will do his duty.” And in this time-serving, self-seeking, money-getting age we cannot afford to lose any agency which renders public witness to the fact that there is something nobler than even lifeit is duty. If it could be so that, in the world of the future, the military genius was no longer needed, still even a world at peace would need the story of the heroic ages, and its witness to the dignity of endurance, obedience, promptitude, sacrifice for a high idea, and above all to the paramount claims of duty.R.T.
1Ch 2:55.-The mission of the Kenites.
This people is first mentioned in Gen 15:19. They were a nomadic tribe, and their principal seat seems to have been the rocky tracts in the south and south-west of Palestine, near the Amalekites (see Num 24:21, Num 24:22). Jethro was a Kenite. Jael was wife of Heber the Kenite. Saul spared them in his expedition against the Amalekites (1Sa 15:6). David maintained friendly relations with them (1Sa 30:29). The house of the Rechabites belonged to this tribe. The friendly feeling between the two tribes, based on the conduct of the Kenites at the time of the Exodus (Exo 18:10-19; Num 10:29-32), led to their intermixture and almost amalgamation with the IsraelitesKenite families not only dwelling among them, but being actually regarded as of one blood. Their semi-monastic austerity is their chief feature. They preserved their nomadic life and customs even when dwelling in the midst of the cities of Israel. Dean Stanley thus pictures a colony of them, that of Heber, the husband of Jael: “Between Hazor, the capital of Jabin, and Kedesh-Naphtali, birthplace of Barakeach within a day’s journey of the otherlies, raised high above the plain of Merom, amongst the hills of Naphtali, a green plain. This plain is still and was then studded with massive terehinths. Underneath the spreading branches of one of them there dwelt, unlike the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, a settlement of Bedouins, living, as if in the desert, with their tents pitched and their camels and asses around them, whence the spot had acquired the name of ‘The Terebiuth,’ or ‘Oak,’ of the ‘Unloading of Tents.'” It is from this peculiarity of the Kenites that we learn their mission.
I. THEIR NOMADIC LIFE REMINDED ISRAEL OF GOD‘S MERCIES. For they had once been what the Kenites then werea mere tribe or aggregation of tribes. But God had, in a most glorious and gracious way, made them a nation, and given them a land. Such a reminder brought home to them the claims of Jehovah, and should have renewed their devotion and allegiance to him. Compare the witness made by the hermits in the times of the early Church.
II. THEIR STRICT OBEDIENCE TO RULE REPROACHED ISRAEL FOR THE NEGLECT OF THE COVENANT. They were loyal to the customs and rules of their founder, whatever disabilities such loyalty might seem to entail. Illustrate by the story of testing the Rechabites with the offer of wine, given in Jer 35:1-19. Impress that we need still the witness of virtue and excellence in those who are not with us; who are among us, but not of our party. And in this we may see some good in the association together in one nation of differing religious sects. Each may teach the others some valuable lessons, and find effective expression of some essential virtue. Our Lord, in his teachings, even ventured to draw lessons from the quick-witted example of the bad man. We may learn something of God and duty from all those with whom we are brought into even casual contact.R.T.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
b. The Sons of Israel, and the Generation of Judah down to David, with Davids Descendants to Elioenai and his Seven Sons.1Ch 2:1 to 1Ch 4:23
1. The Twelve Sons of Israel and the Descendants of Judah: 1Ch 2:1-41 (with an Appendix relating chiefly to the Posterity of Caleb: 1Ch 2:42-55)
1Ch 2:1 These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon (Shimon), Levi, and Judah, 2Issachar, and Zebulun. Dan, Joseph and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Assher. 3The sons of Judah: Er, and Onan, and Shelah; three were born to him of the daughter of Shuah, the Canaanitess; but Er, the first-born of 4Judah, was evil in the eyes of the Lord, and He slew him. And Thamar his daughter-in-law bare him Perez and Zerah: all the sons of Judah were five. 5The sons of Perez: Hezron and Hamul. 6And the sons of Zerah: Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, Calcol, and Dara:1 five of them in all. 7And the sons of Carmi: Achar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the accursed thing. 8And the sons of Ethan: Azariah.
9And the sons of Hezron, that were born to him: Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Celubai. 10And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the sons of Judah. 11And Nahshon begat Salma, and Salma begat 12Boaz. And Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse. 13And Jesse begat his 14first-born Eliab, and Abinadab the second, and Shima the third. Nathanael 15, 16the fourth, Raddai the fifth. Ozem the sixth, David the seventh. And their sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail: and the sons of Zeruiah: Abishai, and Joab, and Asahel, three. 17And Abigail bare Amasa; and the father of Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite.
18And Caleb, son of Hezron, begat with Azubah his wife,2 and with Jerioth; 19and these are her sons: Jesher, and Shobab, and Ardon. And Azubah died; and Caleb took to him Ephrath, and she bare him Hur. 20And Hur begat 21Uri, and Uri begat Bezalel. And afterwards Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir, father of Gilead; and he took her when he was sixty years old, and she bare him Segub. 22And Segub begat Jair, who had twenty and three 23cities in the land of Gilead. And Geshur and Aram took the towns of Jair from them, with Kenath and her daughters, sixty cities. All these are sons 24of Jair, the father of Gilead. And after the death of Hezron, in Calebephrathah, Abiah, Hezrons wife, bare him Ashur (Ashchur), father of Tekoah.
25And the sons of Jerahmeel, the first-born of Hezron, were Ram, the first- born, 26and Bunah, and Oren, and Azem of Ahijah. And Jarahmeel had another wife, and her name was Atarah; she was the mother of Onam. 27And the sons of Ram, the first-born of Jerahmeel, were Maaz, and Jamin, and Eker. 28And the sons of Onam were Shammai and Jada; and the sons of Shammai: Nadab and Abishur. 29And the name of Abishurs wife was Abihail,3 and she bare him Ahban and Molid. 30And the sons of Nadab: Seled and Appaim; and Seled died childless. 31And the sons of Appaim: Ishi; and the sons of Ishi: Sheshan; 32and the sons of Sheshan: Ahlai. And the sons of Jada,brother of Shammai: Jether and Jonathan; and Jether died childless. 33And the sons of Jonathan: Peleth and Zaza. These were the sons of Jerahmeel.
34And Sheshan had no sons, but only daughters. And Sheshan had an Egyptian servant, whose name was Jarha. 35And Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha his servant to wife; and she bare him Attai. 36And Attai begat Nathan, and Nathan begat Zabad. 37And Zabad begat Ephlal, and Ephlal begat Obed. 38And Obed begat Jehu, and Jehu begat Azariah. 39And Azariah begat Helez, 40and Helez begat Elasah. And Elasah begat Sismai, and Sismai begat Shallum. 41And Shallum begat Jekamiah, and Jekamiah begat Elishama.
Appendix: Three Series of Descendants of Caleb: 1Ch 2:42-55
42And the sons of Caleb, brother of Jerahmeel, were Mesha, his first-born; he was the father of Ziph; and the sons of Mareshah, the father of Hebron.4 43, 44And the sons of Hebron: Korah, and Tappuah, and Rekem, and Shema. And Shema begat Raham, father of Jorkeam;5 and Rekem begat Shammai. 45And the son of Shammai was Maon; and Maon was father of Bethzur.
46And Ephah, Calebs concubine, bare Haran, and Moza, and Gazez; and Haran begat Gazez. 47And the sons of Jehdai: Regem, and Jotham, and Geshan, 48and Pelet, and Ephah, and Shaaph. Calebs concubine Maacha bare6 Sheber 49and Tirhanah. And she bare Shaaph the father of Madmannah, Sheva, father of Machbenah, and father of Gibeah; and Calebs daughter was Achsah.
50These were the sons of Caleb the Song of Solomon 7 of Hur, first-born of Ephrathah: 51Shobal, father of Kiriath-jearim. Salma, father of Bethlehem, Hareph, father 52of Bethgader. And Shobal, father of Kiriath-jearim, had sons: Haroeh, and the half of Menuhoth.8 53And the families of Kiriath-jearim were the Ithrite, and the Puthite, and the Shumathite, and the Mishraite. From these came the Zorathite and the Eshtaolite. 54The sons of Salma: Bethlehem, and the Netophathite, Ataroth of the house of Joab, and half of the Menahathite, the Zorite. 55And the families of the scribes dwelling at Jabez were the Tirathites, Shimathites, Suchathites: these are the Kenites that came from Hammath, father of the house of Rechab.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark.The author here begins to enroll his detailed genealogies of the tribes of Israel, extending to the end of 1 Chronicles 8. After premising a list of the 12 sons of Jacob as the general basis of the whole, 1Ch 2:1-2, he begins with the enumeration of the generations and families of the tribe of Judah, which he then pursues in 1 Chronicles 3 and 1Ch 4:1-23, and completes in several parts. No order, regulated by definite historical, geographical, or any systematic principles, lies at the base of this enumeration; he seems rather to have combined into a whole, as far as possible, the more or less fragmentary genealogies of certain branches and families of the house of Judah as they came down to him from antiquity; but this whole is very defective in the unity and homogeneity of its several parts. For of the five immediate descendants of Judah, that founded the tribe of Judah by a numerous posterity, his three sons Shelah, Perez, and Zerah, and his two grandsons Hezron and Hamul, only Zerah (1Ch 2:6-8), Hezron (1Ch 2:9-13), and Shelah (1Ch 4:21-23) have their genealogies given with any fulness; Hamul is entirely passed over, and Perez is only followed out in the line of Hezron. This line (under which the Chronist sums up all that was known of the descendants of Caleb and of the Jephunnite Calebites) is treated with special care and fulness: to it belongs the whole series of the descendants of David till the times after the captivity (1 Chronicles 3), and at least the more considerable part of the genealogical fragments in 1Ch 4:1-23, which serve as a supplement to 1Ch 2:9-55, and of which it is often doubtful which of the members previously named they continue or supplement.
1. The Twelve Sons of Israel: 1Ch 2:1-2.These are given in an order deviating from Gen 35:23 ff., so that the 6 sons of Leah stand first, then the son of Rachels maid, Dan; after that the 2 sons of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin; and lastly, the 3 remaining sons of the maids (Naphtali, Bilhahs son; Gad and Asher, Zilpahs sons). This separation of Dan from his full brother Naphtali is surprising, and can hardly be satisfactorily explained. For if we suppose that Rachel (see Gen 30:3 ff.) regarded Dan, born of her maid Bilhah, as in a sense her own son, and so he is named before Joseph and Benjamin, yet still it is a question, why not also Naphtali, who was likewise born before her own sons. The procedure of the Chronist in regard to Dan is in several respects enigmatical; comp. on 1Ch 7:12. [It is probable that Naphtali was born about the same time with Gad, and is therefore classified with him.J. G. M.]
2. The Descendants of Judah: 1Ch 2:3-41.a. The 5 sons of Judah, the 2 sons of Perez, and the descendants of Zerah: 1Ch 2:3-8.
1Ch 2:3-4. The sons of Judah, etc. The five sons of Judah, three legitimate, born of the daughter of Shuah the Canaanite, Er, Onan, and Shelah, and two born in incest of Tamar, his daughter-in-law, Perez and Zerah, are given in accordance with Genesis 38, and in the same order (comp. also Gen 46:12). The author recalls this his source by taking over word for word the remark on Er in Gen 38:7 : But Er the first-born of Judah was evil in the eyes of the Lord, and He slew him.
1Ch 2:5. The sons of Perez, etc. (Hezron, perhaps the blooming, fair; Hamul, the forgiven, or the tender, weak; comp. Bibelw. i. p. 432). These occur in two registers of the Pentateuch, the list of the children of Israel who went down to Egypt with Jacob, Gen 46:12, and in that of the families of Judah in the Mosaic age, Num 26:21.
1Ch 2:6-8. And the sons of Zerah. Five such are named: Zimri, Ethan, Heman, Calcol, and Dara. On the first of these names, which might possibly be wrongly written ( for , Jos 7:1), see under 1Ch 2:7. The four following names, especially if we read for the last, Darda, with a great number of old witnesses (see Crit. Note), agree surprisingly with the four men compared with Solomon in 1Ki 5:11 : Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Calcol, and Darda, the the sons of Mahol. The assumption of an identity of these four wise men with the four younger sons of Zerah is very natural; it has been already asserted by Grotius, Clericus, Lightfoot (Chronol. V. T. p. 24), Hiller (Onom. Sacr.), and others, and recently by Movers (p. 237) and Bertheau, who insisted on the circumstance, that in 1Ki 5:11 contemporaries of Solomon were not intended (no more than in Ezra 14:14, 18:20, contemporaries of Daniel); further, on the probable identity of Zerah with Ezrah the father of Ethan mentioned in 1Ki 5:11 (=); and lastly, on the statement of the Rabbinical book Seder Olam, which says (p. 52, ed. Meyer) of the sons of Zerah named in our passage: These were prophets who prophesied in Egypt, and thus appears to confirm expressly their being of the class of Hakamim. But the argument raised of late, especially by Hengstenberg (Beitrge zur Einl. ii. 61 f., and on Psalms 88), Keil (Apol. Vers. p. 164 ff.; comp. Comment. p. 39 ff.), as well as Bhr (on 1Ki 5:11, Bibelw. 7 p. 30), against the identity of these persons, seems to be more weighty and decisive. For, 1. The variant Darda for Dara in our passage, however old, appears clearly to have arisen from the endeavour to harmonize; 2. To this endeavour the notice in the Seder Olam owes its origin; 3. That at least near contemporaries of Solomon are named in 1 Kings 5. follows from the manifest and undeniable identity of Ethan the Ezrahite with the so-named composer of Psalms 89, and from the very probable identity of Heman with Heman the Ezrahite, the composer of Psa 88:4. If the Ethan and Heman of 1Ki 5:11 be identical with the composers of these Psalms, they are also probably to be regarded as Levites of the family of the sons of Korah (see the superscr. of these Psalms), who are in 1 Chronicles 15, 17, , 19 called masters of song, and belong not to the family of Judah, and might at the most have found admission into it as adoptive sons of Zerah (Hengstenberg, Beitrge zur Einl. ins A. T. ii. 71),an assumption, however, which is too artificial; 5. The express designation of Calcol and Darda in Kings as sons of Mahol makes it difficult to assume their identity with the sons of Zerah, as the latter must be regarded not as immediate sons, but later descendants of Zerah; 6. Of the pre-eminent wisdom of the sons of Zerah, neither the canonical Old Testament nor the apocryphal literature has anything to report; even such passages as Jer 49:7, Bar 3:22 ff. are silent on the subject. The assumption of the identity of these with the names in 1 Kings 5 can only be maintained on the presupposition that in our passage means not strictly sons, but later descendants of Zerah (so recently Keil, in Comment. p. 41). But this expedient has its difficulty, and by no means suffices to destroy the force of most of the arguments here adduced against the identity. We must therefore take the surprising coincidence of the names to be accidental, or assume with Movers (Chron. p. 237) that we have in the present passage the peculiar genealogical combination of a later author. For the conjecture of Ewald, that Heman and Ethan, the two great singers of the tribe of Judah, were taken by the Levitical music schools into their company and family, and therefore were afterwards (in the superscriptions of Psalms 88, 89) reckoned to the tribe of Levi (Gesch. d. V. Isr. iii. 1, p. 84), is no less artificial than that of Hengstenberg. [But of these considerations, Nos. 1 and 2 contain a mere subjective assumption. No. 3 assumes, without necessity, that the Ethan of 1 Kings 5 and the composer of Psalms 89 are one, since two Ethans may descend from the one patriarch. No. 4 assumes that the composers of Psalms 88, 89 were Levites, whereas the epithet Ezrahite appears to be added expressly to distinguish them from the Levites of those names. No. 5 assumes that Mahol is a proper name, which remains to be proved. No. 6 assumes that the wisdom of Zerahs sons is not probable, because it is not elsewhere mentioned. This argument of itself has little if any weight. On the other hand, one motive to insert these sons of Zerah in the list was probably their occurrence in 1 Kings 5, and the Chronist, according to his wont, is silent on their wisdom, for the sake of brevity, as it was elsewhere recorded.J. G. M.]
1Ch 2:7. And the sons of Carmi; Achar; that is, Achar was descended from Carmi. Comp. the oft-recurring use of the plural , where only one descendant is named (1Ch 2:8; 1Ch 2:30-31; 1Ch 2:42, and Gen 46:23). By Achar, as the addition, the troubler of Israel (, properly the troubled), shows, is meant the Achan of the book of Joshua (Jos 7:1 ff., Jos 22:20), whose name must have been known to the author of this book in the by-form Achar, as he puts the valley of Achor in etymological connection with it (Jos 7:26, Jos 15:7). The link that connects Carmi, the father or ancestor of this Achar, with Zerah is wanting; but from Jos 7:1, where he is called a son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, it is highly probable that he springs from Zimri, the first named of the sons of Zerah, whether Zimri in our passage be an error of the pen for Zabdi, or the reverse, or Zabdi be a son of Zimri, and thus several links of the series from Zerah to Achar have been omitted. On Carmi, comp. also 1Ch 4:1 and Num 26:6, where a family of Reuben bears the name.
1Ch 2:8. And the sons of Ethan: Azariah. This Ethanite Azariah is not otherwise known: no probable reason can be assumed why he only of the sons of Ethan is mentioned.
b. The Descendants of Hezron: 1Ch 2:9-41.a. His three sons, 1Ch 2:9.And the sons of Hezron that were born to him. The passive stands for the indefinite active, so that the following accusatives with depend on the virtual notion of the active one bare him; comp. Gen 4:18; Gen 21:5; Gen 46:20, and the sing. in a similar position, 1Ch 3:4; 1Ch 26:6 (Berth.). The name Ram is, in the New Testament genealogies of Jesus, Mat 1:3-4, Luk 3:33, Aram; comp. , Job 32:2, with , Gen 22:21. The name is undoubtedly a by-form of , 1Ch 2:18, or, as this name is written in 1Ch 4:11, of : it is an adject, gentil., that stands to its stem , as 1Ch 6:11, to 1Ch 6:20 (Ewald, Lehrb. 164, c), or as in Greek (the n. pr. of the well-known Persian sectary) to . Accordingly, the celebrated forefather of Bezaleel had of old three namesCaleb, Celub, the Celuban. Comp. underneath on 1Ch 2:18 ff. and on 1Ch 2:40. The three here named, Jerahmeel, Ram, and Celubai, appear to have been actual sons or immediate descendants of Hezron, whereas the sons of Hezron afterwards appended,Segub, 1Ch 2:21, and Ashur, 1Ch 2:24,as they are co-ordinated with his later descendants, may possibly be sons in a wider sense. At all events, they did not belong to the aforesaid founders of the three celebrated lines of Hezronites, which are analyzed in the following passage, though in an order different from the present enumeration, the family of Ram being placed first, and that of Jerahmeel transferred to the end (comp. on 1Ch 2:18).
. The family of Ram, as first of the three Hezronite lines. His precedence is explained by the circumstance that the house of David sprang from him. The posterity of Ram is therefore carried down to David in seven members. The six members to Jesse, the father of David, are found also in the book of Rth 4:19-21; comp. the genealogies in Matthew 1 and Luke 3
1Ch 2:10. Nahshon, prince of the sons of Judah. This distinguishing epithet, which is wanting in Ruth, points to Num 1:7; Num 2:3; Num 7:12, where Nahshon is named as the prince of Judah at the exodus. As this date, according to the most probable interpretation of the number 430, Exo 12:40, is to be placed fully four centuries after the time of Judah, several members must have fallen out between Hezron, the grandson of Judah, and Nahshon, as well as between Nahshon and Jesse, as the series Salma, Boaz, Obed, and Jesse is not sufficient to fill up the interval of 400 years between Moses and David. [If the 430 years count from the call of Abraham, which has not yet been disproved, the exodus was only 210 years after the descent of Judah into Egypt, instead of four centuries.J. G. M.]
1Ch 2:11. Salma. Instead of , the book of Ruth has, 1Ch 4:20, , but in the following verse , which has passed into the New Testament (Luk 3:32, and so Mat 1:4-5, where Luther has Salma).
1Ch 2:13-15. The seven sons of Jesse. According to 1Sa 17:12 (comp. 1Ch 16:6 ff.), Jesse had 8 sons,a difference which is most easily explained by the supposition that one of the eight died without posterity, and therefore was not included by later genealogists.His first-born Eliab. So is the eldest called in the books of Samuel; on the contrary, in 1Ch 27:18 the form Elihu appears to have come into the place of Eliab. The Peshito has in our passage 8 instead of 7 sons of Jesse, of whom it calls the seventh Elihu, the eighth David; the first 6 agree with the Masoretic text.And Shima the third. The name , occurring thus in 1Ch 20:7, is in 2Sa 13:3; 2Sa 21:22 in the Keri on the contrary, in the Kethib of the latter passage , and in Samuel (1Ch 16:6, 1Ch 17:13) twice . The latter is merely an abbreviated form of .The names of the next three brothers occur nowhere else.
1Ch 2:16-17. And their sisters, Zeruiah and Abigail. Both sisters obtained great celebrity through their heroic sons,Zeruiah, as the mother of Abishai, Joab, and Asahel (1Sa 26:6, 2Sa 2:18; 2Sa 3:39; 2Sa 6:16, etc.), who are always named after their mother, never after their less celebrated father; Abigail, as mother of the commander Amasa, who was involved in Absaloms rebellion (2Sa 17:25; 2Sa 19:14; 2Sa 20:10), whom she bare to Jether the Ishmaelite. This is called 2Sa 17:25, with the epithet , for which, according at least to our passage, the correct form is ; for the Israelitish descent of the man would have needed no distinct notice. Abigail herself appears, besides, according to 2Sa 17:25, as a daughter of Nahash and sister of Zeruiah, and therefore not a full, but only a half sister of David.
. The family of Caleb, as second of the three Hezronite lines: 1Ch 2:18-24.The question, how this first list of his descendants is related to the second in 1Ch 2:42-49, Wellhausen (p. 13 seq.) has endeavoured to answer by regarding the Caleb in 1Ch 2:42 as corresponding to the Celubai in 1Ch 2:9, designating the order in which the special genealogies of the three Hezronite lines occurred, by the names Ram (1Ch 2:10 ff.), Jerahmeel (1Ch 2:25 ff.), and Caleb (1Ch 2:42 ff.), and considering the genealogy of Caleb (1Ch 2:18-24) as a later insertion, whereby the Chronist has disfigured the original and normal development of his genealogy of the Hezronites. He holds that, indeed, this insertion itself is again a conglomerate of genealogical fragments of various origin, as appears most clearly from the reference of 1Ch 2:21-23 to Hezron himself, the father of Caleb.9 Indeed, even 1Ch 2:10-17 are probably an interpolation, whereby the Chronist has endeavoured to extend the pedigree of the Hezronites originally beginning with Jerahmeel (the first-born of Hezron, 1Ch 2:25), on the basis of the book of Ruth, the Ram of which (Rth 4:19) appears to him as a son of Hezron and a brother of Jerahmeel and Caleb, whereas he is in truth, according to 1Ch 2:25, a son of Jerahmeel and grandson of Hezron. Accordingly, the old genealogical table before the Chronist had only two lines of Hezronites (Jerahmeelites and Calebites), and his supplementing action had extended this register, so that he first added a Ram son of Hezron, with his posterity (1Ch 2:10-17), different from Ram son of Jerahmeel, and then a second Caleb (1Ch 2:18-24), with many other descendants than those of the younger brother Jerahmeel, 1Ch 2:42 ff. It cannot be denied that many reasons appear to recommend this bold hypothesis. It explains in a satisfactory way the circumstance that the first-born Jerahmeel, whose genealogy we should expect first, appears after those of his two younger brothers, and also the surprising duplication of the names Ram and Caleb. But the hypothesis comes short of absolute certainty in many points which require to be adduced for confirmation. And especially it still remains doubtful which of the different old traditions concerning the descendants of the old prince of Judah, Caleb the companion of Joshua, whether that in 1Ch 2:18 ff., or that in 1Ch 2:42 ff., or that in 1Ch 4:11; 1Ch 4:15 ff., is to be pronounced the oldest and most trustworthy, and whether we are entitled to reject for one of them all the others at once as totally untrustworthy, and containing no element of historical truth. If it were to be assumed that originally there were two persons of this name, a Caleb son of Hezron (2, 1Ch 4:11 ff.) and a Caleb son of Jephunneh (1Ch 4:15 ff.), this duplication would warn us to be so much the more cautious in the reception or rejection of this or that one of the various traditions that are attached to these honourable names: the still greater complexity of the collective genealogies of Caleb would all the more favour the conjecture that each of the series referred to him must be accounted in the one or the other way as authentic, as containing in itself elements of the genuine posterity of Caleb.
1Ch 2:18. Begat with Azubah his wife. , either begat with (as elsewhere , 1Ch 8:8-9) or caused to bring forth (comp. Isa 66:9). The following words, , appear to be corrupt. If we translate (with D. Kimchi, Piscat., Osiand., and others), with Azubah, a wife, and with Jerioth, two things are strange: the indefinite designation of Azubah as a wife, (for which we should expect his wife, ), and the circumstance that of the second wife no son is named. If we regard (with Hiller, J. D. Mich.) as explicative, with Azubah a wife, that is, Jerioth, we establish a mode of expression which is without a parallel in our book. It is impossible to render And Caleb begat Azubah and Jerioth (B. Striegel). We must either hold , which is, moreover, wanting in two mss. (see Crit. Note), with Berth, and Kamph., as a marginal note that has crept into the text, designed to prevent the translation begat Azubah, or adopt the reading of the Pesh. and the Vulg., , which gives the sense, begat with Azubah his wife Jerioth, and these are her (Jerioths) sons. The latter appears the most satisfactory (comp. Keil). The names of her three sons occur nowhere else in the Old Testament.
1Ch 2:19. And Azubah died, and Caleb took to him Ephrath, namely, to wife. To this second wife of Caleb, whose name in 1Ch 2:50 (comp. 1Ch 4:4) is Ephrathah, belongs Hur, who is also mentioned Exo 31:2 as the grandfather of Bezalel. By this we are scarcely to understand that Ephrathah was properly a local name equivalent to Bethlehem (Gen 36:16; Gen 36:19; Mic 5:1), so that Hur would be designated a descendant of Caleb, born at Bethlehem, or originating thence (an assumption to which Bertheau seems inclined).On 1Ch 2:20, comp. Exo 31:2; Exo 35:30.
1Ch 2:21. Afterwards Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir. Afterwards, , that is, after the birth of those three sons mentioned 1Ch 2:9, whose mother is not named. The whole notice, extending to 1Ch 2:24, of Hezrons descendants, born in his old age of the daughter of Machir the Gileadite, and of a son Ashur, born after his death of a third wife Abiah (1Ch 2:24), is undoubtedly surprising, and unsuitable to the present place: the series of Hezrons sons and their descendants is thereby violently interrupted, and the above-mentioned interpolation theory of Wellhausen has in this case a very strong support. If we hold the present order to be original, we must assume, with Keil, that the here mentioned descendants of Hezron were somehow more closely connected with the family of Caleb than with that of either Ram or Jerahmeel. On Machir the first-born of Manasseh, to whom Moses gave the land of Gilead, comp. Gen 1:23; Num 32:40; Deu 3:15. As he is here and 1Ch 2:23 called father of Gilead, so is it said Num 26:29 that he begat Gilead. Comp. Num 27:1, from which it follows that, by this paternal relation of Machir to Gilead, more must be meant than the bare notion of a descent of the Israelitish population of Gilead from Machir, and that there must have been a definite person, Gilead, son of Machir and grandfather of Zelophehad. By the designation father of Gilead, the present Machir is distinguished from later persons of the same name; comp. 2Sa 9:4; 2Sa 17:27.
1Ch 2:22. And Segub begat Jair. This Jair, the grandson of Hezron through Segub, belonged on the mothers side to the tribe of Manasseh, and occurs therefore elsewhere, as Num 32:41, Deu 3:14, as a Manassite. His family, after the conquest of Og king of Bashan under Moses, received the territory of Argob, and gave to the conquered cities which Moses handed over to him the name Havvoth-Jair ( ), tent-villages of Jair, or life of Jair (comp. Num 32:41; Deu 3:14; Jos 13:30; 1Ki 4:13), with, which designation the name Judah on Jordan, Jos 19:34 (that is, the colony of Jews in Gilead east of the Jordan), is most probably identical; comp. 5. Raumer, PalJames , 4 th edit. p. 233; Hengstenb. Gesch. des Reichs Gottes im A. T. ii. p. 258; Hoffm. Blicke in die frheste Gesch. des gelobten Landes, i. (1870) p. 114.
1Ch 2:23. And Geshur and Aram, the Geshurites and Aramans, which is scarcely a hendiadys for the Aramans of Geshur, but rather points to an alliance of the Geshurites with the neighbouring Aramans. For Geshur (2Sa 3:3; 2Sa 13:37; 2Sa 15:8) was a region in Aram or Syria, lying on the north-west border of Bashan near Hermon and the eastern bank of the Jordan, that in Davids time (comp. on 1Ch 3:2) had a king of its own, and formed at that time an independent kingdom, not subject to Israel,in the opinion of Hitzig (Gesch. d. Volks Israel, i p. 28 ff.), an Amorite kingdom of Arian (?) origin, though Moses in the distribution of the country had assigned it to Manasseh (Jos 13:13; comp. 1Ch 12:5).With Kenath and her daughters, sixty cities. So should the be most probably taken, as a farther district, besides the villages of Jair, which the Geshurites and Aramans took, and not as an explanatory apposition to these (comp. Berth.). For the preceding statement, that the villages of Jair amounted to twenty-three (1Ch 2:22), is much too definite to allow it to be supposed that the now named sixty daughter towns of Kenath form an inexact repetition of the same designation. Much rather the difference of the two districts: the villages of Jair and the daughters of Kenath, appears in the clearest manner from Num 32:41-42, according to which, of the two Manassites Jair and Nobah, the former conquered the Havvoth Jair, the latter the Benoth Kenath. Only in their sum total were these places sixty in number, and only to this sum total does the present apply. Whether, therefore, the group of towns designated by Kenath (now Kanwat, on the western slope of Jebel Hauran) and her daughters numbered exactly thirty-seven towns (as Keil thinks), remains uncertain; and the number sixty may very probably be a round number (comp. also Deu 3:12-14; Jos 13:30). On the time when the Geshurites and Aramans took the sixty towns, nothing can be ascertained from our passage. Certain it is that the later Judge of Israel, Jair (Jdg 10:4), possessed again at least thirty of these towns under the name of Havvoth-Jair, which must have survived to still later times. All these are sons of Jair, not the sixty towns, but the afore-mentioned Segub and Jair and their descendants and correlatives. It may be conjectured that the genealogical source used by the Chronist was originally more full, so that referred not merely to these two names.
1Ch 2:24. And after the death of Hezron in Caleb-ephrathah. This place, which does not elsewhere occur, might possibly be the same as Ephrathah or Bethlehem-ephrathah (see on 1Ch 2:19); the name of Calebs second wife Ephrath might be somehow connected with this her place of abode and death. In 1Sa 30:14 a part of the south of Judah is called Negeb Caleb, because it belonged to the family of Caleb; in analogy with which the town or place, in Which Caleb and his wife Ephrath dwelt, might be called Caleb of Ephrathah, if Ephrath had brought it as a dowry to him, as in Jos 15:18 f. (Keil). Or from the Negeb Caleb, as the southern part of Calebs territory, 1Sa 30:14, possibly the northern part might be distinguished by the more definite name Caleb of Ephrathah, that is, of Bethlehem (Berth.). None of these interpretations of this obscure phrase is perfectly satisfactory; and there is therefore much plausibility in the emendation of Wellhausen, founded on a various reading presented by the Sept. = ), And after Hezrons death Caleb went to Ephrath, the wife of his father Hezron. Here for is read ; for , and for ,a change which is certainly somewhat radical; but the resulting sense is not improbable (comp. Gen 35:22). As the text stands, here is a third wife of Hezron, called Abiah (comp. 1Ch 2:9; 1Ch 2:21), who bears to him Ashur, father of Tekoa (comp. 1Ch 4:5-7), as a fil. postumus after his death. This Ashur (whom Wellhausen is disposed to change into an , and to identify with Hur, Calebs son by Ephrath, 1Ch 2:19) is called father of Tekoa, as lord and chieftain of the town Tekoa, the home of the prophet Amos, two hours south of Bethlehem (comp. Jos 15:59), where this place still exists under the name Tekua (comp. Robinsons Pal. ii. p. 406).
. The family of Jerahmeel, the third line of Hezron: 1Ch 2:25-41.Of Jerahmeel (he whom God pities, whom He loves = ) the first-born of Hezron: 1Ch 2:9. As there was a negeb Caleb (1Ch 2:24) and a negeb of the Kenites, so there was a negeb of the Jerahmeelites, 1Sa 27:10; comp. 1Sa 30:29. This is a proof of the strength and power of this line springing from the oldest Hezronites.Ram the first-born. Wellhausen, perhaps without ground, takes this Ram to be originally identical with the Ram of 1Ch 2:10, the founder of the Ramite family, from which David sprang; comp. on 1Ch 4:21.And Bunah, and Oren, and Ozem of Ahijah. The last of these names, should not apparently designate a fifth son of Jerahmeel, because in that case the should not be wanting. It appears rather to be the name of the mother of the four sons, and a before appears to have fallen out before the of the foregoing (comp. 1Ch 8:9). This conjecture, thrown out by Jun., Tremell., Clericus, J. H. Mich., J. Lange, and approved by all the moderns, appears the more probable, as in the following verse mention is made of a second wife of Jerahmeel, and the Syr. and the Sept. in our verse have reckoned only four sons, the latter rendering by .
1Ch 2:26. Atarah; she was the mother of Onam, whose family is traced out 1Ch 2:28-33. The name appears to signify crown, a name not unsuitable for a female, Pro 31:10. Yet it might signify wall, fort, as the sing, of , the city (comp. Num 32:3; Num 32:34 f.; Jos 16:5; Jos 16:7; Jos 18:13; and Wellhausen, p. 25).
1Ch 2:28-30. Onams family continues itself in pairs of sons to Abishur and Nadab, his grandsons, and to their sons. On the name Abihail, comp. Crit. Note.
Ver, 31. And the sons of Sheshan (descendants; see on 1Ch 2:7), Ahlai. This Ahlai must have been a daughter, not a son, of Sheshan, great-grandson of Nadab, 1Ch 2:29; for (1Ch 2:34) Sheshan had no sons, but only daughters: Ahlai was therefore his heiress; but whether the same daughter who (1Ch 2:35) married the Egyptian Jarha must remain uncertain. The remark of Hiller (Onom. s. p. 736), therefore, on Sheshan: Quicquid habuit liberorum, s. nepotum, sustulit ex unica filia Achlai, is not quite correct.
1Ch 2:33. These were the sons of Jerahmeel. This subscription (going back to 1Ch 2:25) includes 23 descendants of Jerahmeel. It deserves notice, that 23 descendants of Jerahmeel, with the preceding descendants of Judah (from 1Ch 2:3), make up the sum of 70 members of the house of Judah, namely, sons of Judah, 5; of Perez, 2; of Zerah, 5; Carmi, Achar, and Azariah, 3; Ram and his descendants (including the 2 daughters of Jesse, and Jether father of Amasa), 21; Caleb and his descendants, 10; and Jerahmeel and his descendants, 24. This new number 70 of the ancestors of the Jews, made out by Bertheau, loses weight and certainty, because it includes several females, against all genealogical rule reckons the father and mother of Amasa as two members, and excludes the 13 descendants of Sheshan, which sprang from the Egyptian servant Jarha (1Ch 2:34-41), treating them as a mere offshoot (comp. Keil, p. 46). And would not the Chronist, if he had actually wished to represent the posterity of Judah, after the manner of that of his father Israel, Gen 46:28 f., as 70 souls, have overturned this reckoning again by his later additions, and especially the supplements given in 1Ch 4:1-23, and altogether effaced the impression made thereby? Wellhausens interpolation theory, even if only approximately true, by no means agrees with this assumption of a tendency in the writer to symbolic numbers in his enumerations in 1Ch 2:3-33.
1Ch 2:34-41. The family of Jarha, the Egyptian servant. This Jarha occurs nowhere else; he may have served Sheshan during the sojourn of Israel in Egypt; for the latter branched off from Judah in the ninth generation, and belonged thus to the time before Moses. Most of the old expositors, perhaps rightly, presume that Jarha, only after he was made a free man and a proselyte by Sheshan (comp. Exo 22:20; Exo 23:9), married his daughter; comp. the law concerning intermarriage between Israelites and Egyptians, Deu 23:8; also Davids Egyptian servant, 1Sa 30:13 ff. Of the 13 here named descendants of Jarha, none occur elsewhere in the history of the Old Testament. Their names, indeed, recur several times, some of them, for example, in 1 Chronicles 3, among the descendants of David; but it is not in the remotest degree probable that any of these belong to the list of the descendants of Jarha.
Appendix to the Genealogy of the House of Judah: Three Series of Descendants of Caleb, with Names chiefly of Geographical Import: 1Ch 2:42-55
a. The first series: Meshas posterity: 1Ch 2:42-45.And the sons of Caleb, brother of Jerahmeel. This introduction leaves no doubt that the same Caleb is meant as in 1Ch 2:18, and that this is an appendix to his genealogy already communicated. Mesha his first-born; he Was the father of Ziph. Though almost all the following names: Ziph, Mareshah, Hebron, appear to be local names, yet Mesha () sounds decidedly like a personal name; comp. the Moabitish king of this name, who has recently become celebrated by his monument of victory (2Ki 3:4). As, on the other hand, Ziph () appears to be the town adjacent to Hebron which is mentioned Jos 15:55, the same that gave its name to the wilderness of Ziph known to us from the history of David, 1Sa 23:14 ff; 1Sa 25:2, and which Robinson has recognised (1Ch 2:4-17 ff.) in certain ruins on a hill south-east of Hebron, nothing is more natural than to perceive in Mesha the father of Ziph a lord or chieftain, or even the founder, of the town of Ziph (comp. on 1Ch 2:24). By Ziph might also be meant the place mentioned Jos 15:24, pretty far from Hebron in the plain (Shephelah) situated not far from Marash, the ancient Mareshah (so thinks Keil against Bertheau).And the sons of Mareshah the father of Hebron. Mareshah is scarcely the name of that town mentioned Jos 15:44 and 2Ch 11:8 along with Ziph, which occurs in the times of the Maccabees and the Romans under the name of Marissa, and is preserved in the ruins of Marash in the Shephelah, half an hour south of Beitjibrin (5. Raum. PalJames 3 d edit. p. 192; Robinson, 2:693; Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, pp. 129, 142). The expression father of Hebron makes the reference to this town very improbable; for at no time is any dependence of the ancient Hebron (Num 13:23) on that very remote Mareshah recorded. We must rather, as the reading of the Masoretic text now runs, regard Mareshah as the proper name of some old tribe chief, and hold the Hebron signalized among his sons as most probably a person or tribe distinct from the well-known city Hebron (comp. Num 5:28 and Exo 6:18, where is likewise a personal name). So, justly perhaps, Wellhausen and Keil, who is, moreover, disposed to consider the text corrupt, and proposes the following emendation (see Crit. Note): and the sons of Mesha were Abi-Hebron. This conjecture is supported by the analogy of such compounds as Abidan, Abiezer, Abinadab; the simple Hebron in 1Ch 2:43 might very well be an abbreviated form of Abihebron (comp. En-tappuah, Jos 17:7, with the shorter Tappuah, Jos 16:8). [It is simpler and easier to regard Hebron as a person, named, if you will, after a former Hebron.J. G. M.]
1Ch 2:43. And the sons of Hebron: Korah, and Tappuah, and Rekem, and Shema. These four names also must rather be names of persons or tribes than of towns. For Korah and Shema occur only as personal names; Rekem once indeed as the name of a city, Jos 18:27, but belonging to Benjamin, and several times as a personal name; in Num 31:8 as the name of a Midianite prince; and 1Ch 7:18 as the name of a descendant of Manasseh. Only Tappuah (apple) recurs merely as the name of a city (Jos 12:17; Jos 15:34; Jos 16:8; comp. 1Ch 17:7), which, however, proves nothing for the case in point, and by no means establishes a reference to this or that so-called city.
1Ch 2:44. And Shema begat Raham, father of Jorkeam. for which occurs nowhere else, the Sept. exhibits whence Bertheau concludes that it was originally , as in Jos 15:56. But this name Jokdeam the Sept. renders by , and here it reads twice in succession . It exhibits the same also for , and thereby obscures the original relation of the genealogical data in our passage; some of the four sons of Hebron (1Ch 2:43), first Shema and then the penultimate Rekem, have their genealogy traced. With Shammai the son of this Rekem comp. the so named persons above 1Ch 2:28 and below 1Ch 4:17, and also the celebrated leader of the Pharisees of this name, the antagonist of Hillel in the time of Jesus (Joseph. Anliq. xiv. 9. 4).
1Ch 2:45. And Maon was father of Beth Zur. Both Maon and Bethzur are cities in the hill country of Judea; comp. for the former, which is now called Main, and is pointed out as a castle in ruins, with cisterns, etc., on a hill in Carmel south of Hebron, Jos 15:55; 1Sa 23:24 f., 1Ch 25:2; Robinson, 2:421; for the latter, the site of which is to be sought north of Hebron on the road to Jerusalem, Jos 15:58; 2Ch 11:7; 2 Chronicles 5. Raumer, Pal. p. 163. There is no decisive reason for excluding a reference to these places. Maon the son of Shammai may be regarded as the founder of the city so called (comp. Jdg 10:12, where Maon is the name of a non-lsraelitish tribe, along with Amalek and the Zidonians); Bethzur may then have been founded as a colony from Maon, a genetic relation, which is here expressed in a manner not quite usual by father of Bethzur (for above in 1Ch 2:24; 1Ch 2:42, and below in 1Ch 2:50-51, it is not descent of a colony from its mother city, but government of cities by their princes or lords, that is designated in this manner).
b. The second series: posterity of Ephah and Maachah, the two concubines of Caleb: 1Ch 2:46-49.And Ephah, Calebs concubine. The name , occurring elsewhere (1Ch 2:47; 1Ch 1:33) as a mans name, seems here, where it designates a secondary wife of Caleb, to point to a non-lsraelitish origin of its possessor, whether she be regarded as a person or a race. Of the latter opinion is Wellhausen, p. 12, who takes this non-lsraelitish gens mingling With the Calebites to belong to Midian; and on the contrary, the second concubine of Caleb, designated as Maachah, 1Ch 2:48, to be a gens belonging to Canaan. Of the three sons of Ephah, Haran and Gazez are not otherwise known. The middle name Moza occurs Jos 18:26 as the name of a city of Benjamin; but this can scarcely be connected with the son of Caleb and Ephah. That Gazez (Sept. ) is first named as a third son, and then as a grandson of Caleb, may be explained in two ways,either so that the statement: and Haran begat Gazez (which is omitted in the Sept.), be taken as a more exact addition to the foregoing mention of Gazez, or that there were really two descendants of Caleb of the same name, a son and a grandson (uncle and nephew; comp. 1Ch 3:10). The former is the more probable assumption.
1Ch 2:47. And the sons of Jehdai. It is not clear how this Jehdai () is genealogically connected with the foregoing. Hiller in the Onom. s. conjectures without ground that he was one and the same person with Moza, 1Ch 2:46; Jehdai might as well be a second concubine of Caleb. Of the six sons of Jehdai also, of whose names only some (Jotham; comp. Shaaph, 1Ch 2:49) occur elsewhere, we know nothing more.
1Ch 2:48. And Calebs concubine Maachah bare Sheber and Tirhanah. Though this name occurs often (comp. 1Ch 3:2, 1Ch 7:16, 1Ch 8:29, 1Ch 9:43; also the nom. gentilic. , 2Ki 25:23; 1Ch 4:19), yet nothing certain can be conjectured concerning its present bearer; that she was a Canaanitess is a mere conjecture of Wellhausen. The two sons of Maachah occur nowhere else. The masc. (for which some mss. have ; see Crit. Note) may arise from the writer thinking of the father, whom he does not name.
1Ch 2:49. And she bare (besides the two already mentioned) Shaaph, the father of Madinannah. This city of Judah, mentioned Jos 15:31, may be preserved in the present Miniay or Miniah south of Gaza. Its father Shaaph, clearly different from him who is so named 1Ch 2:47, may be regarded as its prince or founder (comp. on 1Ch 2:42); even so Sheva (on which name comp. 2Sa 20:25, Keri) in reference to Machbenah, and the unnamed father in reference to Gibeah. Machbenah, belonging no doubt to Judah, is no further known. Joshua also, Jos 15:57, names a Gibeah in the mountains of Judah, whether the same with the village Jeba mentioned by Robinson and Tobler, on a hill in Wady Mussur, remains a question; comp. Keil on Joshua 15.And Calebs daughter was Achsa. This closing notice puts it beyond doubt that the Caleb hitherto (from 1Ch 2:46) spoken of is the same as Caleb the son of Jephunneh and father of Achsa (whom he promised and gave to the conqueror of Debir as a reward, Jos 15:16 ff.; Jdg 1:12). This is Caleb son of Jephunneh, the contemporary of Moses and Joshua; and therefore it seems difficult to identify him at once with the brother of Jerahmeel and son of Hezron mentioned in 1Ch 2:18; 1Ch 2:42 (comp. on 1Ch 2:18). For this Hezronite, a great-grandson of Judah through Perez, appears to have been older than Moses and Joshua; but our passage, as also 1Ch 4:15, refers clearly to that contemporary of Joshua who is mentioned in the books of Joshua and Judges. That this younger Caleb is a descendant of the Hezronite is highly probable, because in the descendants of one and the same stock it is easy for the collateral genealogies to intermingle, as they have done here and in 1Ch 4:15 ff. (comp. besides, the remarks on 1Ch 4:11; 1Ch 4:13; 1Ch 4:15). If we assume accordingly two Calebs, an older, the Hezronite, of whom we read 1Ch 2:9 (under the name Celubai), 18, 4245, and then again 1Ch 2:50-55, and a younger, whose genealogy is given in our verses (4649) and in 1Ch 4:15 ff., we do not go so far as some older expositors (even Starke), who assume with a double Caleb a double Achsa, a daughter of the Hezronite Caleb (supposed to be here mentioned), and a daughter of the Jephunnite Caleb (Joshua 15; Judges 1). As little do we approve of Movers conjecture (Chron. p. 83), that the words, and Calebs daughter was Achsa, are a spurious interpolation of a later hand. But Keils conjecture, also, that the expression daughter denotes here granddaughter, descendant, that it is the Achsah of Jos 15:16 that is here spoken of, but as a later descendant of the old Hezronite Caleb, and not a daughter of the Jephunnite, we cannot accept, as it obviously does violence to the term daughter. Finally, we reject also Bertheaus attempt to admit only one Caleb, and to refer the diversity in the accounts of him here and before to the inexact manner of the genealogical terms that express also geographical relations; as well as Ewalds opinion, that Caleb in 1Ch 2:42-49 is the Caleb of the book of Joshua; the Caleb in 1Ch 2:9; 1Ch 2:18-20; 1Ch 2:50-55, on the contrary, is a quite different person, whose real name was Celubai. (On the somewhat different, and at all events more probable hypothesis of Wellhausen, see above on 1Ch 2:18.)
c. The third series: posterity of Hur, son of Caleb: 1Ch 2:50-55.As Hur is doubtless the grandfather of Bezaleel mentioned 1Ch 2:19, we have here again a line going back to Caleb the Hezronite.These were the sons of Caleb. This introductory sentence, the generality of which does not suit the following statement, giving a genealogy of only one son of Caleb, appears to indicate that the whole section is taken from an originally different connection.The son of Hur, first-born of Ephrathah (comp. 1Ch 2:19): Shobal. As, after Shobal in the following verse, Salma and Hareph are also named as sons of Hur, it appears more correct to read for , with the Sept., the plur. . In the Masoretic pointing, indeed, the names Salma and Hareph follow Shobal, father of Kiriath-jearim, without close connection by ; and appears in some measure as a superscription. Whether Shobal be the same with the brother of Hur and son of Judah mentioned 1Ch 4:1, must remain doubtful. The town of Kiriath-jearim, of which he is here called the father, that is, founder or chief, is that old Gibeonite town which is otherwise called Kiriath-baal or Baalah (comp. Jos 9:17; Jos 15:9; Jos 15:60), and lay in the north-west corner of Judah, on the border of Benjamin, probably the present Kureyet el Enab (wine town), on the road from Jerusalem to Jaffa (Robinson, 2:588 ff; Keil on Jos 9:17).
1Ch 2:51. Salma, father of Bethlehem. The coincidence of name with the Bethlehemite ancestor of David of the house of Ram mentioned 1Ch 2:17 is perhaps only accidental; comp. on 1Ch 2:54.Hareph, father of Bethgader, of the same place, which in Jos 12:13 is Geder, and in Jos 15:36 Gederah; comp. 1Ch 12:4; 1Ch 27:28. Keil thinks rather of Gedor (), Jos 15:58, 1Ch 4:4; 1Ch 12:7, but with less ground. The name Hareph does not occur elsewhere, though , Neh 7:24; Neh 10:20 (comp. , 1Ch 12:5), may be only a variation of the same name.
1Ch 2:52. Haroeh and the half of Menuhoth. These words, unintelligible to the old translators; , for which the Sept. gives three proper names: , and the Vulg. the unmeaning words: qui videbat dimidium requietionum, are obviously corrupt. Let us read after 1Ch 4:2, where a Reaiah son of Shobal occurs, for (for to regard the former as a mere by-form of , as many old expositors do, is inadmissible), and for according to 1Ch 2:54 : or . The text thus amended (according to Bertheaus conjecture) gives Reaiah and Hazi-hammanahath, that is, half of the Manahathite, as sons of Shobal, two Jewish families, of which the latter may be part of the inhabitants of the town Manahath, 1Ch 8:6. The situation of this place is determined by 1Ch 2:54, where Zorah is mentioned as a neighbouring town, to be near the border of Judah, towards Dan. Reaiah seems from 1Ch 4:2 not to have continued as a local name, but to have been the ancestor of the citizens of Zora; so that his former seat is also to be sought in the north-west of Judah.
1Ch 2:53. And the families of Kiriath-jearim were the Ithrite, etc. These families of Kiriath-jearim are annexed to the already named sons of Shobal as other sons, descendants of the same ancestor. The four families are adduced in the fundamental text as singulars: the Ithrite, the Puthite, etc. The three last named occur nowhere else; on the contrary, to the family of the Ithrites, 1Ch 11:40 (2Sa 23:38), belonged Ira and Gareb, two of Davids heroes.From these came the Zorathite and the Eshtaolite. Zorah, the home of Samson (Jdg 13:2; Jdg 16:31), now Sura, between Jerusalem and Jabneh; Eshtaol, a town on the border of Judah and Dan, near Zorah (comp. Jdg 16:31; Jdg 18:11), probably the present Um Eshteijeh.
1Ch 2:54. The sons of Salma: Bethlehem (the family of Bethlehem; comp. 1Ch 2:51) and the Netophathite. The town Netophah must, as follows from the reference of its inhabitants to Salma, be sought close by Bethlehem; comp. 1Ch 9:16; 2Sa 23:28 f.; 2Ki 25:23; Ezr 2:22; Neh 7:26, whence appears the comparative celebrity of this town, whose site has not yet been discovered.Ataroth of the house of Joab. This is certainly the name of a town, which is to be interpreted, not crowns, but rather walls, forts, of the house of Joab; comp. on 1Ch 2:26. The site is as uncertain as that of the following Hazi-hammanahath (half Manahath); comp. 1Ch 8:6. On the contrary, at the close points certainly to the known border city Zorah mentioned in the foregoing verse; for is only formally different from , being derived from the masc. of , which may have been used along with the feminine as the name of the town, although this cannot be proved. The Zorites of our verse must have formed a second element of the inhabitants of Zorah, along with the Zorathites of the previous verse descended from Shobal.
1Ch 2:55. And the families of the scribes dwelling at Jabez. This Jewish town of Jabez (), whose name recurs 1Ch 4:9 f. as that of a descendant of Judah, is quite unknown in site, but must apparently be sought, like all the places mentioned from 1Ch 2:53, in the north of Judah, on the borders of Benjamin or Dan. Of the families of scribes in Jabez, however, three are mentioned: the Tirathites, Shimathites, and Suchathites. These three names the Vulg. has applied appellatively to the functions of these three classes of learned men, translating: canentes et resonantes et in tabernaculis commorantes. It is possible that the Jewish doctors consulted by Jerome in the translation of our book (perhaps the rabbi from Tiberias, with whom he collated the text from beginning to end; comp. Introd. 6, Rem.) had presented an etymological basis for this interpretation, in seeking to refer1. to , jubilee song, trumpet sound; 2. to , report, echo (or perhaps to , Aram. , traditio legis; comp. Wellhausen, p 30); 3. to = , hut, booth; comp. Lev 23:34 ff. If the etymology here were correct, and it commends itself at all events more than the partly deviating one which Bertheau (by reference of the first term to the Chald. , door, and thus making a synonym of , porters) has attempted, the functions assigned to the three classes of Sopherim, and giving origin to their names, would belong to divine worship, and resemble those of the Levites. And this seems to agree very well with the closing remark: these are the Kenites, that came from Hammath, father of the house of Rechab, as a certain connection or spiritual relationship may be shown, as well of the Kenites as of the Rechabites, with the Levites, if we think on the one hand of Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, the priest of the Midian-Kenites in the region of Sinai (Exo 2:15; Exo 3:1; comp. Jdg 1:16; Jdg 4:11; Jdg 4:17), and of his influence on the legislative and religious activity of Moses (Exodus 18); on the other hand, of the priestly fidelity of the family of the Rechabites, as Jeremiah 35. (comp. 2Ki 10:15) describes them, of their constant standing before the Lord, and, moreover, of the ancient tradition still surviving among the nominal descendants of the Rechabites in Yemen, that the house of Rechab descended from Hobab or Keni (Jdg 1:16), the father-in-law of Moses (comp. A. Murray, Comment, de Kinis, Hamb. 1718; Ngelsbach on Jeremiah 35, vol. xv. p. 254 of Bibelwerk). On a fair examination of these circumstances, it appears highly probable that the certainly foreign (1Sa 15:6) yet highly honoured Kenites, in like manner as the Gibeonites, ministered of old in the sanctuary of Israel, and that the Rechabites of the times of the Kings and a ter the exile (Neh 3:14) were descendants of these old Kenite temple ministers, who, by adherence to one part of their ancient wont and use, kept themselves distinct from the great mass of the people. The naming of Hammath also, as father of the house of Rechab, agrees very well with this hypothesis; for if Jonathan the Rechabite that met with Jehu king of Israel, and was honoured by him (2Ki 10:15; 2Ki 10:23), was a son of Rechab, so may Hammath have been father or forefather of this Rechab, and so ancestor of the whole family. Though all this rises little above the range of the hypothetical, and though in particular the question remains dark and unanswerable, why this Kenite family of Sopherim from Jabez is directly attached to Salma the father of Bethlehem, and through him to Hur the son of Caleb (whether on account of some intermarriage having taken place between a Kenite and an heiress of the house of Salma ?), yet it is on the whole probable that those three names are really designations of three classes of ministers in the sanctuary, and not proper names of families, as the Sept. (, , ) held, and a majority of recent expositors still hold. Besides, Wellhausens attempt to refer that which is stated, both in our verse concerning the Kenites or Rechabites of Jabez, and generally from 1Ch 2:50 on concerning the posterity of Hur and their settlements in the north of Judah to the time after the exile, and so ascribe these statements to bias and fancy, and to admit only the foregoing genealogy, 1Ch 2:42-49, which assigns to the Calebites settlements in the south of Judah around Hebron, as historically reliable, that is, referring to the time before the exile,this whole attempt (pp. 2933) falls short of satisfactory proof. There is no ground for holding that which is reported of the Calebites as inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, Bethlehem, Netophah, Zorah, etc., to be a collection of later traditions than the foregoing accounts of Calebite families in Tappuah, Maon, Bethzur, etc. Neither do we know the geographical position of the several places mentioned in the two sections (1Ch 2:42-55) so well, as to be able to assert that the former refers only to the south, the latter only to the north, of Judah. Respecting Jabez, for example, the seat of the Kenites, it is by no means determined that it is to be sought in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem and Kiriath-jearim (comp. above). In short, it is advisable to avoid such violent attempts to solve the problem here presented as the assumption of a genealogy of Calebites before and after the exile, and to approve the more cautious remark of Bertheau: We can easily imagine the motive which led the Chronist to communicate this verse, though we are unable completely to perceive its contents.
[The term , 1Ch 2:9, seems to be, if not a patronymic, at least a virtual plural, and may well indicate more than one Caleb. The name was famous and frequent in the tribe of Judah. The first of the name appears in 1Ch 2:18-24. He is designated the son of Hezron, though Ram is not, evidently to distinguish him from others of the name. He may have been born 50 or 58 years after Jacob came down to Egypt, as his father was born shortly before that event. He has by his wife Azubah three sons, or perhaps grandsons; and after her death he marries Ephrath, and by her has a well-known son Hur, who was the contemporary of Moses, Exo 17:10. The episode about his father Hezron marrying again when sixty years old, is brought in partly from the concurrence in the foregoing paragraph of the two names Caleb and Ephrath, which are combined in the name of the place where he died, and partly from the high antiquarian interest which it possesses. Hezron was born before Jacob went down to Egypt, and therefore most probably died within 110 years from that date. He died, not in Egypt, but in Caleb-Ephrathah. This implies the presence and power of Caleb in the region of Hebron as a sheik giving name to a place in his estate. In this quarter Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had resided and acquired some property in land, Genesis 23. Caleb of the line of Judah held possession of this estate during the early period of Israel’s residence in Egypt, when they were still a free and honoured people. And there his father died in a town called after the united names of himself and his wife. After the Israelites, however, were reduced to slavery by the Pharaoh that knew not Joseph, the occupation of this region by the descendants of Judah was rendered precarious or entirely interrupted. In this paragraph, then, we have a most unexpected and interesting glimpse of what was taking place in the time of the first Caleb; and in this view of the passage we see that it occupies its right place.
A second Caleb is presented to us in 1Ch 2:42-49. He is distinct from the former in everything but the name: 1. In the mode in which he is introduced, namely, in an appendix after the three sons of Hezron have been brought forward in order; 2. In his sons and wives, which are all quite different from those of his namesake; 3. In his time, as he is the father of Achsah, and therefore lived in and after the 40 years of the wilderness, two or three generations later than the former Caleb; 4. In his place, as a careful examination of the two paragraphs will show; 5. In his designation as the brother of Jerahmeel, while the former is called the son of Hezron; for this phrase cannot mean the son of the Jerahmeel already mentioned, as this would be a superfluous addition, and would not square with the time of this Caleb. Some will conceive that the term brother is here used in a wide sense to denote a kinsman of Jerahmeel, a member of the family. But it is more Simple to consider Jerahmeel here to be a descendant of the former Jerahmeel, not otherwise mentioned, just as Celub in 1Ch 4:11 is said to be a brother of Shuah, who is not previously mentioned. This appendix is thus in its right place, as it signalizes an important member of the Jerahmeelite clan, 1Sa 27:10, Caleb the son of Jephunneh.
A third Caleb comes before us in a second appendix: 1Ch 2:50-55. He is clearly different from each of the others, as he is the son of Hur, the first-born of Ephrathah, and therefore not a Jerahmeelite like the second, but the grandson of the first.
There is nothing to hinder us taking this view of the whole passage, and it might be supported at much greater length. It deals fairly with the author, as it presumes him to observe order, and endeavours not to import confusion into his narrative by a preconceived theory. We submit it to the judgment of the reader.J. G. M.]
Footnotes:
[1]For many mss., as well as the Syr. and the Chald., give , as in 1Ki 5:11.
[2] (for which was to be expected) is wanting in two mss., according to de Rossi, Var. Lect.The Pesh. and Vulg. appear to have read. for .
[3]Instead of , a number of mss. and printed editions have . The same vacillation is also found in 2Ch 9:18, in the like-named wife of Rehoboam.
[4]Instead of might possibly (after the proposal of Keil) be read , and instead of rather the nom. composit. . Comp. the Exeg. Expl.
[5]For the Sept. exhibits ; and so for the following .
[6]Instead of the unexpected masc. , some mss. present the fem. .
[7]Instead of , the Sept. appears to have read , which is perhaps the original form. Comp. Exeg. Expl.
[8]On the probably corrupt words , see Exeg.
[9]. . . Qu 1Ch 2:18 sqq. leguntur, ex variis fontibus hausta a Chronicographo demum ei Chesronorum catalogo interposita sunt, qui quasi fundamentum est totius structur hujus genealogi (l.c. p. 13).Comp. p. 1 Chronicles 16 : . . . farrago sunt omnia (1Ch 2:18-24), ex meris congesta fragmentis.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The former chapter having, in a short and cursory way, dispatched the history of all ages before Israel; this chapter gives us the relation of what the Book of Chronicles hath chiefly in view, the history of the children of Israel leading to Christ. The genealogy in this chapter is carried down as far as the time of David.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Here are the twelve sons of Jacob enumerated, that illustrious family whose history forms so interesting a subject in the church of God.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Sons of Israel: Their Genealogy Typical Sinners
1Ch 2
All this elaborate tracing of family lines shows that the historian is about to conduct his enquiries upon a complete and exact basis. We acquire confidence in the man by the minuteness of the very details, which at first taxes both our patience and our memory. The names may be so read as to constitute only an elaborate catalogue, in which case the spirit of unity would be lost, and the whole process would end in nothingness and disappointment; on the other hand, the list may be so read as to impress the mind with the mystery of unity, suggesting not only a compactness of an individual family or race, but the solidarity of human nature itself.
With the sons of Esau, Edom, and the sons of Israel, in their mere personality we have nothing to do, but if it can be shown that they are part and parcel of a great continuity ending in our own existence and action, they become important in that degree. As a point of immediate criticism it is interesting to note, that the chronicler so far confirms the records which are given in Genesis, as to quote them without doubt or question. It is something to know that by so much the most ancient history of the Bible is confirmed. We have seen that the list given in the former chapter, and occupying something like eighteen verses, is an abridgment of the tenth chapter of Genesis. The importance of this may be seen from the fact that the old Jewish interpreters make out of this very list a total of seventy nations. The list has been well described as a classified summary of the ethnical and geographical knowledge of Hebrew antiquity. With a zeal which cannot but excite admiration, we observe that the chronicler is seized with the determination to write a history which shall begin at the first man, Adam, and go through, as it were, every family and tribe descendant from the head of the race. It is interesting to see that what may be called the spirit of universality, is already beginning to disclose itself in the very structure of the Bible.
We may compare the chronicler to an economist, who is determined that nothing human shall be lost, but that every man, woman, and child shall be scheduled and accounted for, the meanest having a line as well as the greatest.
Animated by this determination, the historian passes from Adam to the sons of Japheth the Fair, on to the sons of Ham, the dark-skinned or swarthy men of Ethiopia, then on to the ten races of Canaan, including Heth or the hittite race, the Amorite or the hill-men of trans-Jordan, the Hivite dwelling on the slopes of Lebanon, the Arkite, and the Sinite dwelling to the west of northern Lebanon, and the rest of the ten races; then he passes to the sons of Shem inhabiting Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud, Aram, and other places; then he sketches the ten generations from Shem to Abraham, with a particularity that would give a human family register of all who came and went in that marvellous period, and so he passes on, showing familiar acquaintance with all the names and places which constituted the foundations and earliest courses of patriarchal and Jewish history.
In this chapter the narrative takes up the lines connected with the sons of Israel, naming them in order, and forming an introduction to their genealogies, which occupy chapters 2-8. All we can attempt to do with a mass of names so strange and bewildering is to fasten upon a point here and there, which may set forth certain definite aspects of human character. Mark, for example, the inevitable line upon which we come, so early as the third verse of this chapter (2). Whatever infirmities or sins may have marked the history of all the men and tribes given in the first verse, they are passed over by this chronicler in significant silence. It must not be forgotten, however, that all their infirmities and iniquities are written with most graphic vividness in the Book of Genesis. But in the third verse we have this line “and Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the Lord.” This character is taken word for word from Gen 38:7 . It would seem as if a certain ineradicable stigma specially attached to certain sins, rendering necessary that they should be recalled from time to time, to illustrate the most modern phases of wickedness. There have been, so to say, many typical sinners in the history of the world; for example, no name can take the place of Cain, when the sin of fratricide shocks the sentiment of society; Achan will always be a leading name in connection with religious felonies; Joab will always be associated with the vilest forms of treachery and cruelty; and Judas Iscariot can have no rival so long as the world endureth. Take, as another instance, the happy references made to the Calebite stock in 1Ch 2:18-24 . It is needful to remember that not only are these names particularly associated with evil, there are also names which God has been pleased to set on high, as marking his encouragement and reward of virtue. This manifestation of justice is to be carefully noted throughout the whole development of biblical history. We cannot think of the wickedness of Cain without being reminded of the purity of Abel; if we are shocked by the felony of Achan, we cannot but be profoundly impressed with the virtue and conduct of Joshua, and so on throughout the whole of the impartial and fearless record. The instances of both kinds which we find in Holy Scripture are mere examples or specimens of the records which are kept on high. It is impossible for any human historian to put down all the iniquities of his race, but here, we may say, with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
Other parts of the list remind us of how possible it is to exist in useful and happy relations without the family history being marked by any characteristic which invests it with peculiar fame. We read in verse thirty-four, “Now Sheshan had no sons, but daughters.” It has been pointed out that the line of Sheshan-Jarha is pursued for thirteen generations of direct descent, but nothing is known of any of its members from any other source. The last-named member of the family, Elishama, is the twenty-fourth generation specified from Judah. Sometimes all that can be found of a family, is but the reappearance of the family name. Even in the case of princes, this has been illustrated. Several of the names which occur in this line recur in the house of David, as for example, Nathan, Obed, Azariah (a by-name of King Uzziah), Shallum, Jehamiah, and Elishama. We see how one nation may become actually absorbed in another, and thus all original characteristics may be relatively lost. Deuteronomy rules ( Deu 23:7-8 ) that, in the third generation, persons of Egyptian blood are to be treated as full Israelites. [Compare Exo 12:38 with Num 11:4 .] We shall see that the Egyptian element was recognised in Judah. Even the name Jarha has an Egyptian cast, some commentators suppose that it is derived from a root which signifies “great river,” and that river has been identified as the Nile. But all this is simply illustrative of the great and glorious truth disclosed by the personality and ministry of the Son of man. All so-called absorptions of one nation by another, were but relative and suggestive. It is not until we come to Jesus Christ the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, that we come to the glorious truth that God hath made of one blood all nations of men, and that in Christ Jesus there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek. If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature, old things have passed away, and all things have become new. The reconciliation of race, the unification of the world, is the miracle of the cross of Christ. The careful reading of all such histories, as are given in the Old Testament, cannot but prepare the mind to receive the doctrine that Jesus Christ was more than a man: more than a mere Jew. Account for it as we may, he stretched himself across the whole human race, and at last offered himself to redeem every living soul. He made no ethnic difficulties. Language was never accounted a stumblingblock. He looked beneath all superficial, local, and personal differences and divisions, and saw the common heart beating in the human breast. He puzzled the world with no metaphysics that could be understood by one type of men only; he preached a gospel of which even little children could comprehend somewhat, and made an appeal to sentiments acknowledged the world over. Had he been a pedant, he would have prided himself upon special knowledge of out-of-the-way peoples and kindreds and tongues; had he been a self-seeker, he would have received honour by whomsoever it was offered; had he been a Jew only, he would have flattered the people over whom he claimed supremacy, and have poured contempt upon all alien lands, but because he was the Son of God, the Son of man, Alpha and Omega, he made himself of no reputation, but took upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, that he might work out for the whole human race a Redemption, simple, beneficent, infinite in meaning, before which reason bows down in homage, and conscience stands at once in consent and adoration.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
1 Chronicles Chapter 2
Then we have the rapid rise of Esau’s posterity, as I have already remarked. We have duke this and duke that; and, finally, in 1Ch 2 , we enter upon the called and chosen – Israel. “These are the sons,” not merely of Jacob, but “of Israel.” It is the purpose of God that appears. Here too they are mentioned merely in their natural order first of all – “Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, Dan, Joseph and Benjamin Naphtali, Gad, and Asher” (1Ch 2:1 ). But the sons of Judah are very particularly brought before us in this chapter – not of Reuben nor of Simeon. The object of the book is purpose. Judah being a tribe first of all chosen for the kingdom, and that too with a view to the Messiah, we can understand why his sons should be first traced out at great length. This is brought before us, down to even the captivity, and after it; and most interesting notices there are here and there – some alas! who transgressed in the thing accursed, but others who were strengthened of God. Such is the history of man.
However, at the end of the chapter, the Spirit of God singles out Caleb’s family; for he was the man who, of all Judah in these early days, answered to God’s purpose. On that I need not now dwell. We see it in Numbers, in Joshua – the peculiar place that Caleb and his daughter had, the father confident in the purpose of God to give Israel the land. Let the strength of their cities be what they might, let their men be ever so valiant, let Israel be ever so feeble, the point of difference was this – that God was with Israel and against the Canaanites. So here we find the result, for faithfulness is fruitful even in this world – much more to life everlasting.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Israel. See notes on Gen 32:28; Gen 43:8; Gen 45:26, Gen 45:28.
Reuben. For the order of these names see App-45
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 2
Now these are the sons of Israel ( 1Ch 2:1 );
And the twelve sons of Jacob. And then we follow for a little bit the sons of Judah, and then we are now zeroing in. As I tell you, we keep coming back zeroing in on the line of Christ. And as we get to Judah, because the Messiah was to come out of Judah, we find the descendants from Judah to Jesse. He was to be a root out of the stem of Jesse. And so that’s the family we’re interested, and then from Jesse, of course, we want David, who was the seventh son of Jesse. His brothers are all named in verses thirteen through fifteen.
Now, you remember, as we were going through Kings that David had a general who gave him problems. He was a mighty man; his name was Joab. And yet Joab did create problems for David, along with his brother Abishai. And they actually were David’s nephews. They were the sons of David’s sister. Now we jump way back from David, we’ve come out to David, but we have left a lot of unnamed people. And so we go to another family in the tribe of Judah, the family of Caleb. He was the one who was a spy with Joshua that brought back the good report and the rest of the chapter deals with the descendants of Caleb. You’re dealing still with the family of Judah. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
1Ch 2:1-2
1Ch 2:1-2
“These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.
1Ch 1:1-2. Israel was another name for Jacob, which he received from the angel after his wrestling with him. (Gen 32:28). These 12 sons of Israel were born in Mesopotamia, except Benjamin who was born near Bethel. (Gen 35:16-20). The family history of Esau is given in the preceding chapter. There is nothing said as to why it is given before Israel or Jacob. We do know, however, that Esau was the older of the brothers and that would make it regular to enumerate his family first.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Still the same method is manifest. The twelve sons of Israel are mentioned. All of them are subsequently referred to, with the exception of Dan and Zebulun, of whose descendants this chronicler gives no account. The direct line of interest in tracing the divine method passes through Judah. The process of exclusion still goes forward on the principles of character. Er, the firstborn, is slain because of his evil, and Achar likewise.
Some lines of descent excluded are again traced, and for the same reason as before, that of their relation to the history of the chosen people. From Judah the movement passes through Perez and Hezron to Ram, somewhat indirectly. Then directly through Jesse to David. In the case of Jesse another crisis and a new departure are observed. He had seven sons, but of them the youngest was chosen. David is the one through whom the royal line is to be preserved until it culminates in God’s one and only King.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
2. The Sons of Israel and the Descendants of Judah (2:1-4:23)
CHAPTER 2 From Israel to Caleb
1. The sons of Israel (1Ch 2:1-2)
2. The sons of Judah (1Ch 2:3-12)
3. The offspring of Jesse (1Ch 2:13-17)
4. The descendants of Caleb (1Ch 2:18-24)
5. The descendants of Jerahmeel (1Ch 2:25-41)
6. Other descendants of Caleb (1Ch 2:42-55)
After the twelve sons of Israel (Jacob) are named, Judah and his sons are mentioned. The entire chapter is devoted to the descendants of Judah. Judah is given the prominent place, because from this tribe the promised Messiah was to come (Gen 49:8-12). The sons of Jesse (verses 13-17) are given, seven in number. In 1Sa 16:5-11; 1Sa 17:12-14 eight are mentioned. This is not a discrepancy. one of these sons probably died childless and his name would therefore have no place in this genealogy. Prominent in this chapter are the sons of Hezron, Jerahmeel, Ram (the Aram of Mat 1:3) and Chelubai. The latter is Caleb. Caleb is here given as a son of Hezron. Is this the same Caleb who was one of the spies, the son of Jephunneh (Num 13:6; Num 13:30; Num 14:6; Num 14:24, etc)? Critics claim that he is the son of Jephunneh and pointed this out as one of the inaccuracies. However, it is impossible that Caleb the son of Hezron, could be identical with Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. Caleb the son of Hezron was the great-grandfather of Bezaleel (verses 19-20), who was selected with Aholiab to do the work in connection with the tabernacle (Exo 31:2). He must therefore have been the ancestor of Caleb the son of Jephunneh. And furthermore, Caleb the son of Jephunneh is mentioned in Chapter 4:15. That in verse 49 a daughter of Caleb (Achsah) is mentioned is not sufficient proof that the son of Jephunneh is meant.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
am 2252, etc. bc 1752, etc
Israel: or, Jacob, Gen 32:28, Gen 49:2
Reuben: Gen 29:32-35, Gen 30:5-24, Gen 35:18, Gen 35:22-26, Gen 46:8-27, Gen 49:4-28, Exo 1:2-4, Num 1:5-15, Num 13:4-15, Num 26:5-65, Rev 7:5-8
Reciprocal: Gen 42:13 – Thy servants Gen 46:10 – Simeon Gen 46:11 – Levi Gen 46:12 – Judah Gen 46:13 – Issachar Gen 46:14 – Zebulun Gen 46:15 – Leah Gen 49:3 – my firstborn Exo 1:1 – General 1Ch 5:1 – he was Mat 1:2 – Jacob begat Act 7:8 – and Jacob
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
PART I (1 Chronicles 1-9). Genealogical Lists, together with Geographical and Historical Notes.These chapters form a general introduction to the whole work. They contain the following genealogies, often in an incomplete form: Adam to Israel (1Ch 1:1 to 1Ch 2:2)with the exception of Cains descendants (Gen 4:16-22)the whole material is taken from Genesis 1-36; Judah (1Ch 2:3-55); David (1Ch 3:1-24); Judah again, and made up of fragments (1Ch 4:1-23); Simeon (1Ch 4:24-43); Reuben, Gad, and half the tribe (the eastern) of Manasseh (1Ch 5:1-26); Levi and the Levitical cities (1Ch 6:1-81); Issachar (1Ch 7:1-5); Benjamin (1Ch 7:6-12); Naphtali (1Ch 7:13); half the tribe of Manasseh (the western) (1Ch 7:14-19); Ephraim (1Ch 7:20-29); Asher (1Ch 7:30-40); Benjamin again, together with the house of Saul (1Ch 8:1-40). Then follows an enumeration of the inhabitants of Jerusalem given in the order: sons of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, Manasseh, priests, Levites, doorkeepers (1Ch 9:1-44); 1Ch 9:35-44 are repeated verbally from 1Ch 8:29-38.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
{e-Sword Note: 1 and 2 Chronicles were largely in topical format in the printed edition. When possible, this content has been divided by verse/chapter. Content that could not fit elsewhere was placed in the 1 and 2 Chronicles Book Comments for e-Sword.}