Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Chronicles 23:23
The sons of Mushi; Mahli, and Eder, and Jeremoth, three.
23. The sons of Mushi ] Cp. 1Ch 24:30.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
And the sons of Mushi,…. The other son of Merari:
Mahli; so called from his uncle, his father’s brother:
and Eder and Jerimoth, three; mentioned again 1Ch 24:30.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(23) The sons of Mushi; Mahli, and Eder, and Jeremoth, three.These, with the sons of Kish. make only four Merarite houses, whereas six are required to make up a total of twenty-four Levitical houses. But 1Ch. 24:26-27 shows that the chroniclers registers named a third son of Merari, viz., Jaaziah, whose descendents constituted the three houses of Shoham, Zaccur, and Ibri, in the time of David. Adding these, we get seven clans, one too many for our purpose.
Perhaps the Mahli of 1Ch. 23:23 is a mistaken repetition from 1Ch. 23:21, due to some ancient scribe. The word three at the end of the verse would be added after the mistake had become fixed. It is wanting in 1Ch. 24:30, which otherwise repeats 1Ch. 23:23. Excluding this second Mahli as spurious, we get six clans of Merarites; and thus, altogether, twenty-four classes of Levitical overseers of the work of the sanctuary (1Ch. 23:4), consisting of nine Gershonite, nine Kohathite, and six Merarite houses. This number of classes or guilds tallies exactly with the total of 24,000 Levites (1Ch. 23:4), for it allows a thousand to the class (or clan). See on 1Ch. 13:1.
It is right to remark (1) that the passage 1Ch. 24:26-27, itself needs emendation (see Notes there); (2) that the old versionsviz., the LXX., Vulg., Syriac, and Arabichave the reading of our present text in 1Ch. 23:21-23, so that the assumed omission of Jaaziah and his sons must be very ancient, and is probably due to an oversight of an early editor, if not of the chronicler himself; (3) in the two other passages of the Old Testament where the sons of Merari are named, only twoviz., Mahli and Mushiappear; and (4) that the recurrence of the name Mahli in our 1Ch. 23:23 as a son of Mushi is easily paralleled: e.g., in 1Ch. 23:9-10 ( Shimei twice). But it is easier to suppose an omission here than an interpolation of unknown names at 1Ch. 24:26-27. And the correspondence of the present list up to this point with that of 1 Chronicles 24 favours the assumption of an unintentional omission in 1Ch. 23:21.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Jeremoth: 1Ch 24:30, Jerimoth
Reciprocal: 1Ch 6:47 – Mahli