Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

amount of the mass of gold and silver which had been collected by David for the building of the temple cannot with certainty be reckoned, because we are ignorant of the weight of the shekel of that time; and (3) that the correctness of the numbers given is very doubtful, since it is indubitably shown, by a great number of passages of the Old Testament, that the Hebrews have from the earliest times expressed their numbers not by words, but by letters, and consequently omissions might very easily occur, or errors arise, in copying or writing out in words the sums originally written in letters. Such textual errors are so manifest in not a few places, that their existence cannot be doubted; and that not merely in the books of the Chronicle, but in all the historical books of the Old Testament. The Philistines, according to 1 Sam. xiii. 5, for example, brought 30,000 chariots and 6000 horsemen into the field; and according to 1 Sam. vi. 19, God smote of the people at Beth-shemesh 50,070 men. With respect to these statements, all commentators are now agreed that the numbers 30,000 and 50,000 are incorrect, and have come into the text by errors of the copyists; and that instead of 30,000 chariots there were originally only 1000, or at most 3000, spoken of, and that the 50,000 in the second passage is an ancient gloss. There is, moreover, at present no doubt among investigators of Scripture, that in 1 Kings v. 6 (in English version, iv. 26) the number 40,000 (stalls) is incorrect, and that instead of it, according to 2 Chron. ix. 25, 4000 should be read; and further, that the statement of the age of King Ahaziah at 42 years (2 Chron. xxii. 22), instead of 22 years (2 Kings viii. 2(5), has arisen by an interchange of the numeral siirns D and 2. A similar case is to be found in Ezra ii. 69, compared with Neh. vii. 70-72, where, according to Ezra, the chiefs of the people gave 61,000 darics for the restoration of the temple, and according to Nehemiah only 41,000 (viz. 1000 + 20,000 + 20,000). In both of these chapters a multitude of differences is to be found in reference to the number of the exiled families who returned from Babylon, which can only be explained on the supposition of the numeral letters having been confounded. But almost all these different statements of numbers are to be found in the oldest translation of the Old Testament, that of the LXX., from which it appears that they had made their way into the mss. before the settlement of the Hebrew text by the Masoretes, and that consequently the use of letters as numeral signs was customary in the pre-Masoretic times. This use of the letters is attested and presupposed as generally known by both Hieronymus and the rabbins, and is confirmed by the Maccabean coins. That it is a primeval custom, and reaches back into the times of the composition of the biblical books, is clear from this fact, that the employment of the alphabet as numeral signs among the Greeks coincides with the Hebrew alphabet. This presupposes that the Greeks received, along with the alphabet, at the same time the use of the letters as numeral signs from the Semites (Phoenicians or Hebrews). The custom of writing the numbers in words, which prevails in the Masoretic text of the Bible, was probably first introduced by the Masoretes in settling the rules for the writing of the sacred books of the canon, or at least then became law.

After all these facts, we may conclude the Introduction to the books of the Chronicle, feeling assured of our result, that the books, in regard to their historical contents, notwithstanding the hortatory-didactic aim of the author in bringing the history before us, have been composed with care and fidelity according to the authorities, and are fully deserving of belief.

As to the exegetical literature, see my Handbook of Introduction^ § 138.

N order to show the connection of the tribal ancestors of Israel with the peoples of the earth, in chap. i. are enumerated the generations of the primeval world, from Adam till the Flood, and those of the postdil avians to Abraham and his sons, according to the accounts in Genesis; in chap, ii.-viii., the twelve tribal ancestors of the people of Israel, and the most important families of the twelve tribes, are set down; and finally, in chap, ix., we have a list of the former inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the irenealoo-ical table of Kino; Saul. The enumeration of the tribes and families of Israel forms, accordingly, the chief part of the contents of this first part of the Chronicle, to which the review of the families and tribes of the primeval time and the early days of Israel form the introduction, and the information as to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the family of King Saul the conclusion and the transition, to the following historical narrative. Now, if we glance at the order in which the genealogies of the tribes of Israel are ranged, — viz. («) those of the families of Judah and of the house of David, chap. ii. 1-iv. 23; (b) those of the tribe of Simeon, with an account of their dwellingplace, chap. iv. 24-43; (c) those of the trans-Jordanic tribes, Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, chap. v. 1-26; (J) of the tribe of Levi, or the priests and Levites, chap. v. 27-vi. 66; (e) of the remaining tribes, viz. Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, cis-Jordanic Manasseh, Ephraim, and Asher, chap. vii.; and of some still remaining families of Benjamin, with the family of Saul, chap, viii., — it is at once seen that this arrangement is the result of regarding the tribes from two points of view, which are closely connected with each other. On the one hand, regard is had to the historical position which the tribes took up, according to the order of birth of their tribal ancestors, and which they obtained by divine promise and guidance; on the other hand, the geographical position of their inheritance has been also taken into account. That regard to the historical position and importance of the tribes was mainly determinative, is plain from the introductory remarks to the genealogies of the tribe of Reuben, chap. v. 1, 2, to the effect that Reuben was the first-born of Israel, but that, because of his offence against his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph, although they are not specified as possessors of it in the family registers: while it is narrated that Judah, on the contrary, came to power among his brethren, and that out of Judah had come forth the prince over Israel. Judah is therefore placed at the head of the tribes, as that one out of which God chose the king over His people; and Simeon comes next in order, because they had received their inheritance within the tribal domain of Judah. Then follows Reuben as the first-born, and after him art' placed Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh. because thev had received their inheritance along with Reuben on the other side of the Jordan. After Reuben, according to age, only Levi could follow, and then after Levi come in order the other tribes. The arrangement of them, however — Issachar. Benjamin, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, Asher, and again Benjamin — is determined from neither the historical nor by the geographical point of view, but probably lav ready to the hand of the chronicler in the document used by him, as we are justified in concluding from the character of all these geographical and topographical lists.

For if we consider the character of these lists somewhat more carefully, we find that they are throughout imperfect in their contents, and fragmentary in their plan and execution. The imperfection in the contents shows itself in this, that no genealogies of the tribes of Dan and Zebulun are given at all, only the sons of Naphtali being mentioned (vii. 13); of the half tribe of Manasseh beyond Jordan we have only the names of some heads of f athers'-houses * (v. 24); and even in the relatively copious lists of the tribes of Judah, Levi, and Benjamin, only the trenealoffies °f single prominent families of these tribes are enumerated. In Judah, little more is given than the families descended from Pharez, chap. ii. 5-iv. 20, and a few notices of the family of Shelah; of Levi, none are noticed but the succession of generations in the high-priestly line of Aaron, some descendants of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, and the three Levites, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, set over the service of song; while of Benjamin we have only the genealogies of three families, and of the family of Saul, which dwelt at Gibeon. But the incompleteness of these registers comes still more prominently into view when we turn our attention to the extent of the genealogical lists, and see that only in the cases of the royal house of David and the high-priestly line of Eleazar do the genealogies reach to the Babylonian exile, and a few generations beyond that point; while all the others contain the succession of generations for only short periods. Then, again, in regard to their plan and execution, these genealogies are not only unsymmetrical in the highest degree, but they are in many cases fragmentary. In the tribe of Judah, besides the descendants of David, chap, iii., two quite independent genealogies of the families of Judah are given, in chap. ii. and iv. 1-23. The same is the case with the two genealogies of the Levites, the lists in chap. vi. differing from those in chap. v. 27-41 surprisingly, in vi. 1, 28, 47, 5Q, Levi's eldest son being called Gershom, while in chap. v. 27 and 1 Chron. xxiii. 61, and in the Pentateuch, he is called Gershon. Besides this, there is in chap. vi. 35-38 a fragment containing the names of some of Aaron's descendants, who had been already completely enumerated till the Babylonian exile in chap. v. 29-41. In the genealogies of Benjamin, too, the family of Saul is twice entered, viz. in chap. viii. 29-40 and in chap. ix. 35-44. The genealogies of the remaining tribes are throughout defective in the highest degree. Some consist merely of an enumeration of a number of heads of houses or families, with mention of their the tribes tracing their descent from the sons of the twelve patriarchs; the Vaterhauser are the subdivisions descended from their grandsons or greatgrandsons; while the Familien are the component parts of the Yaterhauser. The author's use of these words is somewhat vacillating; but Geschlecht, in this connection, has always been rendered by " family," Vaterhaus by " fathers-house," Familie by " household," and Familiengruppen by " groups of related households." — Tr.

dwelling-place: as, for instance, the genealogies of Simeon, chap. iv. 24-43; of Reuben, Gad, half Manasseh, chap. v. 1-24; and Ephraim, chap. vii. 28, 29. Others give only the number of men capable of bearing arms belonging to the individual fathers' -hous as those of Issachar, Benjamin, and Asher, chap. vii. 2-5, 7-11, 40; and finally, of the longer genealogical lists of Judah and Benjamin, those in chap. iv. 1-20 and in chap. viii. consist only of fragments, loosely ranged one after the other, giving us the names of a few of the posterity of individual men, who logical connection with the larger divisions of these tribes is not stated.

By all this, it is satisfactorily proved that all these registers and lists have not been derived from one larger genealogical historical work, but have been drawn together from various old nealogical lists which single rac< s and families had saved and carried with them into exile, and preserved until their return into the land of their fathers: and that the author of the Chronicle has received into his work all of these that he could obtain, whether complete or imperfe. he found them. Nowb i-< any trace of artificial arrangement or an amalgamation of the various 1: und.

\ n we recollect that the Chronicle was composed in the time of Ezra, and that U]^ to that time, of the whole people, for the most part only households and families of the tribes of Judah, Levi, and Benjamin had returned to Canaan, we will not find ir wonderful that the Chroni ntains somewhat ra copious registers of these three tribes, and giv >nlv frag- m nts 1- aringon the circumstances of prse-exilic times in the case of the remaining tribes.

V rs. 1 \. Ill'" patriarchs from Adam to Noah and his i

— The names of the ten patriarchs of the primeval world, from the Creation to the Flood, and the three sons of Noah, are given according to Gen. v.. and grouped together without any link of connection whatever: it is assumed as known from Genesis, that the first ten names denote generations succeeding one another, and that the last three, on the contrary, are the names of brethren.

Vers, 5-23. The peoples and races descended from the sons of Noah, — These are enumerated according to the table in Gen. x.: but our author lias omitted not only the introductory and concluding remarks (Gen. x. 1, 21, 32), but also the historical notices of the founding of a kingdom in Babel by Nimrod, and the distribution of the Japhetites and Shemites in their dwellingplaces (Gen. x. 5, 9-12, 185-20, and 30 and 31). The remaining divergences are partly orthographic, — such as baft, ver. 5, for bin, Gen. x. 2, and KO^l, ver. 9, for ncyi, Gen. x. 7; and partly arising from errors of transcription, — as, for example, HOT, ver. 6, for na'H, Gen. x. 3, and conversely, ETJ^j ver. 7, for E'OYl, Gen. x. 4, where it cannot with certainty be determined which form is the original and correct one; and finally, are partly due to a different pronunciation or form of the same name, — as ftWVhfi, ver. 7, for B^Knrij Gen. x. 4, the a of motion having been gradually fused into one word with the name, EPJw, ver. 11, for B^o Gen. x. 13, just as in Amos ix. 7 we have D^3 for D^S; in ver. 22, byy for bty, Gen. x. 28, where the LXX. have also EvdX, and TJKbj ver. 17, for Bfc, Gen. x. 23, which last has not yet been satisfactorily explained, since SJ^B is used in Ps. cxx. 5 with Tjg of an Arabian tribe. Finally, there is wanting in ver. 17 B"JN *I3* before py, Gen. x. 23, because, as in the case of Noah's sons, ver. 4, where their relationship is not mentioned, so also in reference to the peoples descended from Shem, the relationship subsisting between the names Uz, Hul, etc., and Aram, is supposed to be already known from Genesis. Other suppositions as to the omission of the words D"JK HXR are improbable. That this register of seventy-one persons and tribes, descended from Shem, Ham, and Japhet, has been taken from Gen. x., is placed beyond doubt, by the fact that not only the names of our register exactly correspond with the table in Gen. x., with the exception of the few variations above mentioned, but also the plan and form of both registers is quite the same. In vers. 5-9 the sections of the register are connected, as in Gen. x. 2-7, by *jas; from ver. 10 onwards by *l?J, as in Gen. ver. 8; in ver 17, again, by ^2, as in Gen. ver. 22; and in ver. 18 by T7J, and ver, 19 by *?, as in Gen. vers. 24 and 25. The historical and geographical explanation of the names has been given in the commentary to Gen. x. According to Bertheau, the peoples descended from the sons of Noah amount to seventy, and fourteen of these are enumerated as descendants of Japhet, thirty of Ham, and twenty-six of Shem.

These numbers he arrives at by omitting Nimrod, or not enumerating him among the sons of Ham; while, on the contrary, he takes Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, and Joktan, all of which are the names of persons, for names of peoples, in contradiction to Genesis, according to which the rive names indicate persons, viz. the tribal ancestors of the Terahites and Joktanites, peoples descended from Eber by Peleg and Joktan.

Vers. 24-27. The patriarchs from Shcm to Abraham. — The names of these, again, are simply ranged in order according to Gen. xi. 10-26, while the record of their a^es before the besetting and after the birth of sons is omitted. Of the sons of Terah only Abram is named, without his brothers; with the remark that Abram is Abraham, in order to point out to the reader that he was the progenitor of the chosen people so well known from Genesis (cf. chap. xvii.).

Vers. 28-1)4. The sons of Abraham, — In ver. 28 only Isaac and Ishmael are so called; Isaac first, as the son of the promise. Then, in vers. 29—31, follow the posterity of Ishmael, with the remark that Ishmael was the first-born; in vers. <*)2 and 33, the sons of Keturah; and finally in ver. 34, the two sons of Isaac. — Ver. 29 ff. The names of the generations (ni"Pin) of Ishmael (Ilebr. Yishma'el) correspond to those in Gen. xxv. 12-15, and have been there explained. In ver..">2 f. also, the names of the thirteen descendants of Abraham by Keturah, six sons and seven grandsons, agree with Gen. xxv. 1 1 (see commentary on that passage); only the tribes mentioned in (Jen. xxv.;>, which were descended from Dedan the grandson of Keturah, are omitted. From this Bertheau wrongly concludes that the chronicler probably did not rind these names in his copy of the Pentateuch. The reason of the omission is rather this, that in Genesis the greatgrandchildren are not themselves mentioned, but onlv the tribes descended from the grandchildren, while the chronicler wished to enumerate only the sons and grandsons. Keturah is called E'^B after Gen. xxv. G, where Keturah and Ilagar are so named. — Ver. 34. The two sons of Isaac. Isaac has been already mentioned as a son of Abram, along with Ishmael, in ver. 28. But here the continuation of the genealogy of Abraham is prefaced by the remark that Abraham begat Isaac, just as in Gen. xxv. 19, where the begetting of Isaac the son of Abraham is introduced with the same remark. Plence the supposition that the registers of the posterity of Abraham by Ilagar and Keturah

(vers. 28-33) have been derived from Gen. xxv., already in itself so probable, becomes a certainty.

Vers. 35-42. The posterity of Esau and Seir. — An extract from Gen. xxxvi. 1-30. Ver. 35. The five sons of Esau are the same who, according to Gen. xxxvi. 4 f., were born to him of his three wives in the land of Canaan. WW is another form of B^, Gen. ver. 5 (Kethibh).— Vers. 36, 37." The grandchildren of Esau. In ver. 36 there are first enumerated five sons of his son Eliphaz, as in Gen. xxxvi. 11, for ^ is only another form of toy (Gen.). Next to these five names are ranged in addition pPDJfl jJJDm "Timna and Amalek," while we learn from Gen.

xxxvi. 12 that Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, who bore to him Amalek. The addition of the two names Timna and Amalek in the Chronicle thus appears to be merely an abbreviation, which the author might well allow himself, as the posterity of Esau were known to his readers from Genesis. The name Timna, too, by its form (a feminine formation), must have guarded against the idea of some modern exegetes that Timna was also a son of Eliphaz. Thus, then, Esau had through Eliphaz six grandchildren, who in Gen. xxxvi. 12 are all set down as sons of Adah, the wife of Esau and the mother of Eliphaz. ( Vide com. to Gen. xxxvi. 12, where the change of Timna into a son of Eliphaz is rejected as a misinterpretation.) — Ver. 37. To Keuel, the son of Esau by Bashemath, four sons were born, whose names correspond to those in Gen. xxxvi. 13. These ten (6 + 4) grandsons of Esau were, with his three sons by Aholibamah (Jeush, Jaalam, and Korah, ver. 35), the founders of the thirteen tribes of the posterity of Esau. They are called in Gen. xxxvi. 15 VP ""r?^ "CT, heads of tribes (cj)v\ap^ot) of the children of Esau, i.e. of the Edomites, but are all again enumerated, vers. 15-19, singly.1

1 The erroneous statement of Berthcau, therefore, that "according to Genesis the Edomite people was also divided into twelve tribes, five tribes from Eliphaz, four tribes from Reuel, and the three tribes which were referred immediately to Aholibamah the wife of Esau. It is distinctly stated that Amalek wras connected with these twelve tribes only very loosely, for he appears as the son of the concubine of Eliphaz/' — must be in so far corrected, that neither the Chronicle nor Genesis knows anything of the twelve tribes of the Edomites. Both books, on the contrary, mention thirteen grandsons of Esau, and these thirteen grandsons are, according to the account of Genesis, the thirteen phylarchs of the Edomite people, who are distributed according to the three wives of Esau; so that the thirteen families may be grouped together in three tribes. Nor is Amalek connected only in a loose way with the other tribes in

—Vers. 38-42. When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people. For this reason, in Gen. xxxvi. 20-30 the tribal princes of the Seirite inhabitants of the land are noticed; and in our chapter also, ver. 38, the names of ti..vn Vtfff *:z. and in vers. 39-42 of their sons (eighteen men and one woman, Tinnu >. are enumerated, where only Aholibamah the daughter of An ah, also mentioned in Gen. xxxvi. 25, is omitted. The names correspond, except in a few unimportant points, which have been already di I in the Commentary on Genesis. The inhabitants of Mount Seir consisted, then, after the immigration i Bean and his descendants, of twenty tribes under a like nun.:' phylarchs, thirteen of whom were Edomite, of the family..!' Ivan, and seven Seirite, wh Led in the Chronicle ~'l~' 03, and in < -:. lis ^n

Tl. inhabitants of the land, that is, aborigil

U we glance ovi Abraham as they are enumerated in I that it embr. i) his the thirteen phylarchs descended from E raj 2 phylarchs, and eighteen grandsons all(l:l laughfe - v, bave thus in all tfw nam. aSj and: must add koned i nty tri. rhich is t. B rtheau arrn at by means calculations and errors in numb

Genesis lv included in the number of the - of Adah in ver. 12,... relationshi]

anion- the Aliufim 'm therefore enumerates not five but six Lri m Elip] icier has d< npletely obliterated the twelvefold divi - i: rtheau further maintains, hut the and the only thing which is omitted in reference to them is the tit, •: VJT *::2, it being unnecessary in a genealogical enumeration of the descendants of Esau.

1 That the Chronicle pves no countenance to this view appears from Bertheau's calculation of the 70 tribes: from fehmael, 12; from Keturah, 13; from Isaac, 2; from Esau, 5 sons and 7 grandchildren by Elipbaz (Timna,

Upon this conclusion he founds his hypothesis, that as the three branches of the family of Noah are divided into seventy peoples (which, as we have seen at page 51 f., is not the case), so also the three branches of the family of Abraham are divided into seventy tribes; and in this again he finds a remarkable indication u that even in the time of the chronicler, men sought by means of numbers to bring order and consistency into the lists of names handed down by tradition from the ancient times."

Vers. 43-50. The kings of Edom before the introduction of the kingship into Israel. — This is a verbally exact repetition of Gen. xxxvi. 31-39, except that the introductory formula, Gen. ver. 32, " and there reigned in Edom," which is superfluous after the heading, and the addition " ben Achbor" (Gen. ver. 39) in the account of the death of Baal-hanan in ver. 50, are omitted; the latter because even in Genesis, where mention is made of the death of other kings, the name of the father of the deceased king is not repeated. Besides this, the king called Hadad (ver. 46 f.), and the city \JJ3 (ver. 50), are in Genesis Hadar (ver. 35 f.) and W3 (ver. 39). The first of these variations has arisen from a transcriber's error, the other from a different pronunciation of the name. A somewhat more important divergence, however, appears, when in Gen. ver. 39 the death of the king last named is not mentioned, because he was still alive in the time of Moses; while in the Chronicle, on the contrary, not only of him also is it added, TTTj n»*13 because at the time of the writing of the Chronicle he had long been dead, but the list of the names of the territories of the phylarchs, which in Genesis follows the introductory formula T\\ov} npK), is here connected with the enumeration of the kings by vn\), " Hadad died, and there were chiefs of Edom." This may mean that, in the view of the ver. 36, being included in the number), and 4 grandsons by Beuel — 16 in all; from Seir 7 sons, and from these 20 other descendants, 27 in all, which makes the sum of 70. But the biblical text mentions only 19 other descendants of Seir, so that only 26 persons came from Seir, and the sum is therefore 12 + 13+2 + 16 + 26 = 69. But we must also object to other points in Bertheau's reckoning: (1) the arbitrary change of Timna into a grandchild of Esau; (2) the arbitrary reckoning of Esau and Israel (= Jacob) without Ishmael. Was TSsau, apart from his sons, the originator of a people? Had the author of the Chronicle cherished the purpose attributed to him by Bertheau, of bringing the lists of names handed down by tradition to the round or significant number 70, he would certainly in ver. 33 not have omitted the three peoples descended from Dedan (Gen. xxv. 3), as he might by these names have completed the number 70 without further trouble.

chronicler, the reign of the phylarchs took the place of the kingship after the death of the last king, but that interpretation is by no means necessary. The 1 consec. may also merely express the succession of thought, only connecting logically the mention of the princes with the enumeration of the kings; or it may signify that, besides the kings, there were also tribal princes who could rule the land and people. The contents of the register which follows require that OTJ should be so understood.

Vers. 51-54. The princes of Edom. — The names correspond to those in Gen. xxxvi. 40-43, but the heading and the subscription in Genesis are quite different from those in the Chronicle. Here the heading is, u and the Allufim of Edom were," and the subscription, " these are the Allufim of Edom," from which it would be the natural conclusion that the eleven names given are proper names of the phylarchs. But the occurrence of two female names, Timna and Aholibamah, as also of names which arc unquestionably those of races, e.g. Aliah, Pinon, Teman, and Mibzar, is irreconcilable with this interpretation. If we compare the heading and subscription of the register in Genesis, we find that the former speaks of the names "of the Allufim of Edom according to their habitations,1 according to their places in their names," and the latter of "the Allufim of Edom according to their habitations in the land of their possession." It is there unambiguously declared that the names enumerated are not the names of persons, but the names of the dwelling-places of the Allufim, after whom they were wont to be named. We must therefore translate, " the Alluf of Timna, the Alluf of Aliah," etc., when of course the female names need not cause any surprise, as places can just as well receive their names from women as their possessors as from men. Xor is there any greater difficulty in this, that only eleven dwelling-places are mentioned, while, on the contrary, the thirteen sons and grandsons of Esau are called Allufim. For in the course of time the number of phvlarchs mi^ht have decreased, or in the larger districts two phylarchs may have dwelt together. Since the author of the Chronicle has taken this register also from Genesis, as the identity of the names clearly shows he did, he might safely assume that the matter was already known from that book, and so might allow himself to abridge the heading without fearing any misunderstanding; seeing, too, that he does not enumerate to of Esau, but DHX WK, and Edom had become the name of a country and a people.

The list of the twelve sons of Israel (ii. 1, 2) serves as foundation and starting-point for the genealogies of the tribes of Israel which follow, chap. ii. 3-viii. The enumeration of the families of the tribe of Judah commences in ver. 3 with the naming of Judah's sons, and extends to chap. iv. 23. The tribe of Judah has issued from the posterity of only three of the five sons of Judah, viz. from Shelah, Pharez, and Zerah; but it was subdivided into five great families, as Hezron and Hamul, the two sons of Pharez, also founded families. The lists of our three chapters give us: (1) from the family of Zerah only the names of some famous men (ii. 6-8); (2) the descendants of Hezron in the three branches corresponding to the three sons of Hezron, into which they divided themselves (ii. 9), viz. the descendants of Ram to David (ii. 10-17), of Caleb (ii. 18-24), and of Jerahmeel (ii. 25-41). Then there follow in chap. ii. 42-55 four other lists of descendants of Caleb, who peopled a great number of the cities of Judah; and then in chap. iii. we have a list of the sons of David and the line of kings of the house of David, down to the grandsons of Zerubbabel; and finally, in chap. iv. 1-23, other genealogical fragments as to the posterity of Pharez and Shelah. Of Hamul, consequently, no descendants are noticed, unless perhaps some of the groups ranged together in chap. iv. 8-22, whose connection with the heads of the families of Judah is not given, are of his lineage. The lists collected in chap. iv. 1-20 are clearly only supplements to the genealogies of the great families contained in chap. ii. and iii., which the author of the Chronicle found in the same fragmentary state in which they are communicated to us.

Vers. 1, 2. 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. xxxv. 23 ff., is perhaps to be accounted for by Rachel's wishing the son of her maid Bilhah to be accounted her own (vide Gen. xxx. 3-6).

Vers. 3-5. The sons of Judah and of Pharec, ver. 3 f. — The five sons of Judah are given according to Gen. xxxviii., as the remark on Er which is quoted from ver. 7 of that chapter shows, while the names of the five sons are to be found also in Gen. xlvi. 12. The two sons of Phaivz are according to Gen. xlvi. 12, cf. Num. xxvi. 21.

Vers. 0-8. Sons and descendants of Zerah, — In ver. 6, five names are grouped together as W3 of Zerah, which are found nowhere else so united. The first, Zimri, may be strictly a son; but *10| may perhaps be a mistake for ^.rs for Achan, who is in ver. 7 the son of Carmi, is in Josh. vii. 1 called the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah. I*ut ^.~' (J< sh.) may also be an error for *TOT, or lie may have been a sun of Zimri, since in aealogical lists an intermediate member of the family is often passed over. thing certain can, however, be ascertained; both names are found I but of persons belonging to other tribes: Zimri aa prince of the Sim<.Num. wv. 14;

where it is said oi S imon he was wiser than the Ezrahite Ethan, and lleman, and ( I Darda, the sons of Machol, with the unimportant variation of jrm for PTI. On this account, M< and Bertheau, following Clericus on 1 Songs iv. 31

(v. 11), hold the identity of the wise men mentioned in 1 Kings v. 11 with the sons (descendants) of Z Pah to be beyond doubt. Bnt the main reason which Clericus produces in support of this supposition, the com • minumet quidem uniue patru filioitun, and the difficulty of believing that in alia fam'dia Hebrcea there should have been quatuor fratres cognomines quatuor fdiis Zerachi Jiuhv filii, loses all its force from the fact that the supposition that the four wise men in 1 Kings v. 11 are brothers by blood, is a groundless and erroneous assumption. Since Ethan is called the Ezrahite, while the last twTo are said to be the sons of Machol, it is clear that the four were not brothers. The mention of them as men famous for their wisdom, does not at all require that we should think the men contemporary with each other. Even the enumeration of these four along with Zimri as ni? *33 in our verse does not necessarily involve that the five names denote brothers by blood; for it is plain from vers. 7 and 8 that in this genealogy only single famous names of the family of Zerah the son of Judah and Tamar are grouped together. But, on the other hand, the reasons which go to disprove the identity of the persons in our verse with those named in 1 Kings v. 11 are not of very great weight. The difference in the names yn and jnvr is obviously the result of an error of transcription, and the form *JTlT8jn (1 Kings v. 11) is most probably a patronymic from rnt, notwithstanding that in Num. xxvi. 20 it appears as *rnt, for even the appellative PH?*?, indigena, is formed from niT. We therefore hold that the persons who bear the same names in our verse and in 1 Kings v. 11 are most probably identical, in spite of the addition b\ni2 »33 to Calcol and Darda (1 Kings v. 11). For that this addition belongs merely to these two names, and not to Ezrah, appears from Ps. Ixxxviii. 1 and lxxxix. 1, which, according to the superscription, were composed by the Ezrahites Heman and Ethan. The authors of these psalms are unquestionably the Heman and Ethan who were famed for their wisdom (1 Kings v. 11), and therefore most probably the same as those spoken of in our verse as sons of Zerah. It is true that the authors of these psalms have been held by many commentators to be Levites, nay, to be the musicians mentioned in 1 Chron. xv. 17 and 19; but sufficient support for this view, which I myself, on 1 Kings v. 11, after the example of Hengstenberg, Beitrr. ii. S. 61, and on Ps. Ixxxviii. defended, cannot be found. The statement of the superscription of Ps. Ixxxviii. 1 — " a psalm of the sons of Koran" — from which it is inferred that the Ezrahite Heman was of Levitic origin, does not justify such a conclusion.1 For though the musician Heman the son of Joel w^as a Korahite of the race of Kohath (1 Chron. vi. 18-23), yet the musician Ethan the son of Kishi, or Kushaiah, was neither Korahite nor Kohathite, but a Merarite (vi. 29 ff.). Moreover, the Levites Heman and Ethan could not be enumerated among the Ezra-

1 The above quoted statement of the superscription of Ps. Ixxxviii. 1 can contain no information as to the author of the psalm, for this reason, that the author is expressly mentioned in the next sentence of the superscription. The psalm can only in so far be called a song of the children of Korah, as it bears the impress peculiar to the Korahite psalms in contents and form.

hites, that is, the descendants of Zerali, a man of Judah. The passages which are quoted in support of the view that the Levites were numbered with the tribes in the midst of whom they dwelt, and that, consequently, there were Judcean and Ephraimite Levites, — as, for example, 1 Sam. i. 1, where the father of the Levite Samuel is called an Ephrathite because he dwelt in Mount Ephraim; and Judg. xvii. 7, where a Levite is numbered with the family of Judah because he dwelt as sojourner p3) in Bethlehem, a city of Judah, — certainly prove that the Levites were reckoned, as regards citizenship, according to the tribes or cities in which they dwelt, but certainly do not show that they were incorporated genealogically with those tribes because of their place of residence.1 The Levites Ileman and Ethan, therefore, cannot be brought forward in our verse "as adopted sons of Zerah, who brought more honour to their father than his proper sons " (Hengstb.). This view is completely excluded by the fact that in our verse not only Ethan and Hem an, but also Zimri, Calcol, and Dara are called sons of Zerah, yet these latter were not adopted sons, but true descendants of Zerah. Besides, in ver. 8, there is an actual son or descendant of Ethan mentioned, and consequently *— and [3 cannot possibly be understood in some cases as implying only an adoptive relationship, and in the others actual descent. But the similarity of the names is not of itself sufficient to justify us in identifying the persons. As the name Zerah again appears in chap. vi. 26 in the genealogy of the Levite Asaph, so also the name Ethan occurs in the same genealogy, plainly showing that more than one Israelite bore this name. The author of the Chronicle, too, has sufficiently guarded against the opinion that Zerah's sons Ethan and Ileman are identical with the Levitical musicians who bear the same names, by tracing back in chap. vi. the family of these musicians to Levi, without calling them Ezrahites.* But to hold, with Movers, S. 237, that the recurrences of the same names in various races are contradictions, which are to be explained only on the supposition of genealogical combinations by various authors, will enter into

1 Not even by intermarrying: with heiresses could Levites become members of another tribe; for, according to the law, Num. xxxvi. 5 ff., heiresses could marry only men of their own tribe; and the possibility of a man of Judah marrying an heiress of the tribe of Levi was out of the question, for the Levites possessed no inheritance in land.

the head of no sensible critic. We therefore believe the five persons mentioned in our verse to be actual descendants of the Judaean Zerah; but whether they were sons or grandsons, or still more distant descendants, cannot be determined. It is certainly very probable that Zimri was a son, if he be identical with the Zabdi of Josh. vii. 1; Ethan and Heman may have been later descendants of Zerah, if they were the wise men mentioned in 1 Kings v. 11; but as to Calcol and Dara no further information is to be obtained. From vers. 7 and 8, where of the sons (*ia) of Zimri and Ethan only one man in each case is named, it is perfectly clear that in our genealogy only individuals, men who have become famous, are grouped together out of the whole posterity of Zerah. The plural V|3 in vers. 7 and 8, etc., even where only one son is mentioned, is used probably only in those cases where, out of a number of sons or descendants, one has gained for himself by some means a memorable name. This is true at least of Achan, ver. 7, who, by laying hands on the accursed spoils of Jericho, had become notorious (Josh. vii.). Because Achan had thus troubled Israel 0??)j he is called here at once Achar. As to Carmi, vide on iv. 1. — Ver. 9. The only name given here as that of a descendant of Ethan is Azariah, of whom nothing further is known, while the name recurs frequently. Nothing more is said of the remaining sons of Zerah; they are merely set down as famous men of antiquity (Berth.). There follows in

Vers. 9-41. The family ofllezron, the first-born son of Pharez, which branches off in three lines, originatinc; with his three sons respectively. The three sons of Hezron are Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai; but the families springing from them are enumerated in a different order. First (vers. 10-17) we have the family of Ram, because King David is descended from him; then (vers. 18-24) the family of Chelubai or Caleb, from whose lineage came the illustrious Bezaleel; and finally (vers. 25-41), the posterity of the first-born, Jerahmeel. — Ver. 9. v T>fa ~)V'$y what was born to him. The passive stands impersonally instead of the more definite active, " to whom one bore," so that the the tribe of Judah had been admitted into their guild "by the Levitic musical schools, and on that account had been received also into their family, and so had been numbered with the tribe of Levi, is thus completely refuted, even were it at all possible that members of other tribes should have been received into the tribe of Levi.

following names are subordinated to it with HK. The third person singular Niph. occurs thus also in iii. 4 and xxvi. 6; the construction of Niph. with W* frequently (Gen. iv. 18, xxi. 5, and elsewhere). Earn is called, in the genealogy in Matt, i. 3, 4, Aram; comp. D\ Job xxxii. 2, with BT1K, Gen. xxii. 21. Ov3 is called afterwards 3p3; cf. on ver. 18.

Vers. 10-17 The family of Ram (vers. 10-12), traced down through six members to Jesse. — This genealogy is also to be found in liiith iv. 19-21: but only here is Nahshon made more prominent than the others, by the addition, " prince of the sons of Judah." Nahshon was a prince of Judali at the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt (Num. i. 7, ii. 3, vii. 12). Now between him, a contemporary of M sea. and Pharez, who at the immigration of Jacob into Egypt was about fifteen yean old, lies a period of 430 years, during which the Israelites remained in Euvpt. For that time only three names — Ilezron, Ram, and Amminadab — are mentioned, from which it i veral links must have been passed So also, from Nahshon to David, for a period of are too few; and consequently here also tl famous ancestors of David are omitted. *cbb is called in Ruth IV.20,21, HoSband In vers. L3 15, seven sons and two daughters of Jesse, With those of their sons who became famous (vers. 16, 17), enum According to 1 Sam. xvii. 1l}. Jesse bad eight sons. This account, which agrees with that in 1 Sam. xvi. 8-12, may be reconciled with the enumeration in our verse, on the supposition that \ the sons died without posterity. In

1 Sam. xvi. 6 ff. and xvii. 13, the names of the eldest three — Eliab, Abinadab, and Shammah — occur. Besides *"". we meet with the form "*"N (ver. L3); and the name T(&b is only another form of "V':'-". which is found in 2 Sam. xiii. 3 and in 1 Chron. xx. 7, and is repeated in 2 Sam. xiii. 32 and xxi. 21 in the Kethibh (WP*). The names of the other three sons here mentioned (vers. 14 and 15) are met with nowhere else. — Ver. 16 f. The sisters of David have become known through their heroic sons. Zeruiah is the mother of the heroes of the Davidic history, Abishai, Joab, and Asahel (cf. 1 Sam. xxvi. 0; 2 Sam. ii. 18, iii. 39, viii. 16, and elsewhere). Their father is nowhere mentioned, u because their more famous mother challenged the greater attention" (Berth.). Abigail was, according to 2 Sam. xvii. 25, the daughter of Nahash, a sister of Zeruiah, and so was only a half-sister of David, and was the mother of Amasa the captain of the host, so well known on account of his share in the conspiracy of Absalom; cf. 2 Sam. xvii. 25, xix. 14, and xx. 10. His father was Jether, or Jithra, the Ishmaelite, who in the Masoretic text of 2 Sam. xvii. 25 is called, through a copyist's error, vN")b>sn instead of V^^^!r?; see comm. on passage.

Vers. "18-24. The family of Caleb.— That $* is merely a shortened form of ^v3, or a form of that word resulting from the friction of constant use, is so clear from the context, that all exegetes recognise it. We have first (vers. 18-20) a list of the descendants of Caleb by two wives, then descendants which the daughter of the Gileadite Machir bore to his father Hezron (vers. 21-23), and finally the sons whom Hezron's wife bore him after his death (ver. 24). The grouping of these descendants of Hezron with the family of Caleb can only be accounted for by supposing that they had, through circumstances unknown to us, come into a more intimate connection with the family of Caleb than with the families of his brothers Ram and Jerahmeel. In vers. 42-55 follow some other lists of descendants of Caleb, which will be more fully considered when we come to these verses. The first half of the 18th verse is obscure, and the text is probably corrupt. As the words stand at present, we must translate, " Caleb the son of Hezron begat with Azubah, a woman, and with Jerioth, and these are her (the one wife's) sons, Jesher," etc. n\32, fiUi ejus, suggests that only one wife of Caleb had been before mentioned; and, as appears from the "and Azubah died" of ver. 19, Azubah is certainly meant. The construction rix 1 vin, a he begat with," is, it is true, unusual, but is analogous to j£> Tvin? viii. 9, and is explained by the fact that TpiPI may mean to cause to bear, to bring to bearing; cf. Isa. lxvi. 9: therefore properly it is, u he brought Azubah to bearing." The difficulty of the verse lies in the ni^TTiX"! nt&*3 for, according to the usual phraseology, we would have expected ifiKW instead of n$K. But n$K may be, under the circumstances, to some extent justified by the supposition that Azubah is called indefinitely " woman," because Caleb had several wives. rtPTJTUCI gives no suitable meaning. The explanation of Kimchi, " with Azubah a woman, and with Jerioth," cannot be accepted, for only the sons of Azubah are hereafter mentioned; and the idea that the children of the other wives are not enumerated here because the list used by the chronicler was defective, is untenable: for after two wives had been named in the enumeration of the children of one of them, the mother must necessarily have been mentioned; and so, instead of fTOa, we should have had rnttjj VB. Hiller and J. H. Michaelis take rw as explicative, " with Azubah a woman, viz. with Jerioth; " but this is manifestly only the product of exegetical embarrassment. The text is plainly at fault, and the easiest conjecture is to read, with the Peschito and the Vulgate, ns taPM instead of nw JUSta, "he begat with Azubah his wife, Jerioth (a daughter); and these are her sons.'' In that case TOtal would be added to n2tfy, to guard against FOttg being taken for ace. obj. The names of the sons of Azubah, or of her daughter Jerioth, do not occur elsewhere. — Ver. 19. When Azubah died, Caleb took Ephrath to wife, who bore him Ilur. ForHlDK we find in ver. 50 the lengthened feminine form iTTI"1DK; cf. also IT. 4. From Hur descended, by Uri, the famou> IJ-.-zaleel, the skilful architect of the tabernacle ( Iv. xxxi. 2, xxxv. 30). — Vers. 21-24. The descendants of Hezron numbered with the stock of Caleb: (a) those begotten by Hezron with the daughter of Machir, vers. 21 23; (l>) those born to Hi /run after his death, ver. 24. — Ver. 21. Afterwards (TW)j after the birth of the sons mentioned in ver. 9, whose mother is not mentioned, when he was.sixty years old, Hezron took to wife the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, who bore him Segub. Machir was the fir>t-born of Manasseh (Gen. 1. 2 Num. xxvi. 29), But Machir is not called in vers. '2 1 and 23 the father of Gilead because he was the originator of the Israelite population of Gilead, but 3M has here its proper signification. Machir begot a son of the name of.Giles 1 | Num. xxvi. I; and it is clear from the genealogy of the daughters of Zelophehad, communicated in Num. xxvii. 1, that this expression is to be understood in its literal sense. Machir is distinguished from other men of the same name (cf. 2 Sam. IX. 4, xvii. 27) by the addition, father of Gilead. S lb the son of Hezron and the daughter of Machir be^at Jair. This Jair, bclon(rin<r on his mother's side to the tribe of Manasseh, is set down in Num. xxxii. 40 f., Deut. iii. 14, as* a descendant of Manasseh. After Moses' victory over Og king of Bashan, Jair's family conquered the district of Argob in Bashan, i.e. in the plain of Jaulan and Hauran; and to the conquered cities, when they were bestowed upon him for a possession by Moses, the name Havvoth-Jair, i.e. Jair's-life, was given. Cf. Num. xxxii. 41 and Deut. iii. 14, where this name is explained. These are the twenty-three cities in the land of Gilead, i.e. Periia. — Ver. 23. These cities named Jair's-life were taken away from the Jairites by Geshur and Aram, i.e. by the Arameans of Geshur and of other places. Geshivr denotes the inhabitants of a district of Aram, or Syria, on the north-western frontier of Bashan, in the neighbourhood of Hermon, on the east side of the upper Jordan, which had still its own kings in the time of David (2 Sam. iii. 3, xiii. 37, xiv. 23, xv. 8), but which had been assigned to the Manassites by Moses; cf. Josh. xiii. 13. The following 'til rtji?"fl*? must not be taken as an explanatory apposition to TKJ rtn-JlK: " Jair's-lif e, Kenath and her daughters, sixty cities" (Berth.). For since DfiND refers to the collective name Jair, Geshur and

Aram could not take away from Jair sixty cities, for Jair only possessed twenty-three cities. But besides this, according to Num. xxxii. 42, Kenath with her daughters had been conquered by Nobah, who gave his own name to the conquered cities; and according to Deut. iii. 4, the kingdom of Og in Bashan had sixty fenced cities. But this kingdom was, according to Num. xxxii. 41 and 42, conquered by two families of Manasseh, by Jair and Nobah, and was divided between them; and as appears from our passage, twenty-three cities were bestowed upon Jair, and all the rest of the land, viz. Kenath with her daughters, fell to Nobah. These two domains together included sixty fenced cities, which in Deut. iii. 14 are called Jair's-life; while here, in our verse, only twenty-three cities are so called, and the remaining thirty-seven are comprehended under the name of Kenath and her daughters. We must therefore either supply a 1 copul. before rn[?~riK, or we must take 'P'JIN in the signification " with Kenath/'and refer T*J DW to both Jair's-life and Kenath. Cf. herewith the discussion on Deut. iii. 12-14; and for Kenath, the ruins of which still exist under the name Kanuat on the western slope of the Jebel Hauran, see the remarks on Num. xxxii. 42. The time when these cities were taken away by the Arameans is not known. From Judg. x. 4 we only learn that the Jair who was judge at a later time again had possession of thirty of these cities, and renewed the name Jair's-life. ^N"?3 is not all these sixty cities, but the before-mentioned descendants of Hezron, who are called sons, that is offspring, of Machir, because they were begotten with the daughter of Machir. Only two names, it is true, Segub and Jair, are enumerated; but from these two issue the numerous families which took Jair's-life. To these, therefore, must we refer the fwT/3. — Ver. 24. After the death of Hezron there was born to him by his wife Abiah (the third wife, cf. vers. 9 and 21) another son, Ashur, the father of Tekoa, whose descendants are enumerated in chap. iv. 5-7. Ilezron's death took place WnftK afaa, » i„ Caleb Epl^^an." This expression is obscure. A c ling to 1 Sam. xxx. 1 4, a part of the Negeb (south country) of Judah was called Negeb Caleb, as it belonged to the family of Caleb. According to this anal the town or village in which Caleb dwelt with his wife Ephrath may have been called ('aid. of Ephrathah, if Ephrath had brought this place I laleb, as in th mentioned in Josh.

. L8 f. Ephrathah, or Ephrath, was the ancient name of D. xxxiii. 19, xlviii. 1), and with it the name of probably she wa i ailed after her birthplace. If this sup] tion be well founded, th< d ( lali ] iirathah wonld be the little town of Bethlehem. Ashur is cai *:n of Tel

Hezron, which inhabited a | the N Judah called after him the south of the.l.-ralmr 8am. xxvii. LO, xxx.

\ r.: born to Jerahmeel by his first wife. Five na ad i follow; but as the last, ~"n\ although

Oth< by 1 that precede are with each other, it apj i woman, and probably a D has fallen out after the immediately &. So CI., J. II.

Mich., Berth. T uns in probability from the mention in \ i of another wife, whence we might expect that in v> the fir would be named. — V r. 26. Only n of the: 1 wife is given, Onam, whose posterity follows in vers. 28 33; for in ver. 27 the three sons of Bam, the first-born of Jerahmeel, are enumerated. — Ver. 28. Onam had two sons, Shammai and.1 ■ the second of these, again, two sons, Nadab and Abishur. — V '. To Abishur his wife

Abihail bore likewise two sons, with whom his race terminates. — In vers. oO, 31, Nadab's posterity follow, in four members, ending with Ahlai, in the fourth generation. But Ahlai cannot well have been a son, but must have been a daughter, the heiress of Sheshan; for, according to ver. 34, Sheshan had no sons, but only daughters, and gave his daughter to an Egyptian slave whom he possessed, to wife, by whom she became the mother of a numerous posterity. The |W *}3 is not irreconcilable with this, for *JJp denotes in genealogies only descendants in general, and has been here correctly so explained by lliller in Onomast. p. 736: qulcquid liabuit liberorum, sive nepoturrtj sustulit ex unica filia Acltlai. — Vers. 32 and 33. The descendants of Jada, the brother of Shammai, in two generations, after which this genealogy closes with the subscription, " these were the sons of Jerahmeel."1 — In vers. 34-41 there follows the family of Sheshan, which was originated by the marriage of his daughter with his Egyptian slave, and which is continued through thirteen generations. The name of this daughter is in ver. 25 f. not mentioned, but she is without doubt the Ahlai mentioned in ver. 31. But since this Ahlai is the tenth in descent from Judah through Pharez, she was probably born in Egypt; and the Egyptian slave Jarha was most likely a slave whom Sheshan had in Egypt, and whom he adopted as his son for the propagation of his race, by giving him his daughter and heir to wife. If this be the case, the race begotten by Jarha with the daughter of Sheshan is traced down till towards the end of the period of the judges. The Egyptian slave Jarha is not elsewhere met with; and though the names which his posterity bore are found again in various parts of the Old Testament, of none of them can it be proved that they belonged to men of this family, so as to show that one of these persons had become famous in history.

Vers. 42-55. Other renowned descendants of Caleb. — First of all there are enumerated, in vers. 42-49, three lines of descendants of Caleb, of which the two latter, vers. 46-49, are the issue of concubines. — The first series, vers. 42-45, contains some things which are very obscure. In ver. 4-2 there are mentioned, as sons of Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel, Mesha his first-born,

1 Bertbeau reckons up to "the concluding subscription in ver. 33" the following descendants of Judah: " Judah's sons = 5; Hezron and Hamul = 2; Zerah's sons = 5; Karmi, Akar, and Azariah = 3; Ram and his descendants (including the two daughters of Jesse, and Jeter the father of Amasa) = 21; Kaleb and his descendants = 10; Jerahmeel and his descendants = 2-4: together = 70." But this number also is obtained only by taking into account the father and mother of Amasa as two persons, contrary to the rule according to which only the father, without the mother, is to be counted, or, in case the mother be more famous than the father, or be an heiress, only the mother.

with the addition, "this is the father of Ziph; and the sons of Mareshah, tlie father of Hebron," as it reads according to the traditional Masoretic text. Now it is here not only very surprising that the sons of Mareshah stand parallel with Mesha, but it is still more strange to find such a collocation as " sons of Mareshah the father of Hebron." The last-mentioned difficulty would certainly be greatly lessened if wo might take Hebron to be the city of that name, and translate the phrase kk father of Hebron," lord of the city of Hebron, according to the analogy of u father of Ziph," M father of Tekoa" (ver, 24 }, and other names of that sort. But the continuation of the genealogy, "and the is of Hebron were Koran, and Tappuah, Rekem, and Siiema". is irreconcilable with such an interpretation. For of these names, Tappuah, i.r. spple, is indeed met with several times as the name of a city (Josh, xii. 1 7. \v. 34, wi. 8); and Rekem is the name of a city of Benjamin ( Josh, xviii. 27 >, but occurs also t\\ as the name ( n — one Midianite prince (Num. xxxi.

8. and once of a Manassite (1 ( i n. vii. 16); but the other two, Korah and Shema, only occur j of per i, In ice. We must therefoi Hebron a- the name of a in v. 28 and Ex. vi. 18. But if 1 [ebron be the name i man, then Mareshah also must be interpreted in the same manner. This i by the mention of the sons of

M.: hah parallel with Mesha the I rn; but still more so by the circumstance that the interpretation of Mareshah and the famous capita] of the trio I of J udah, we must therefore make the attempt, however inadmissible it may Beem at first sight, to take Mareshah, in the conn.: \ the name of a city, which appears as father i 1 Lebron, and that we must also conclude that the ancient city Hebron (Num. xiii. 23) stood in some sort of dependent relationship I i Mareshah, perhaps only in later times, although we cannot at all determine to what time the representation of our verse applies. But at the foundation of this argument there lies an error as to the position of the city Mareshah. Mareshah lay in the Shephelah (Josh. xv. 44), and exists at present as the ruin Marasch, twenty-four minutes south of Beit-Jibrin: vide on Josh. xv. 44; and Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, § 129 and 142 f. Zipb, therefore, which is mentioned in 2 Chron. xi. 8 along with Mareshah, and which is consequently the Ziph mentioned in our verse, cannot be, as Bertheau believes, the Ziph situated in the hill country of Judah, in the wilderness of that name, whose ruins are still to be seen on the hill Zif, about four miles southeast from Hebron (Josh. xv. 55). It can only be the Ziph in the Shephelah (Josh. xv. 24), the position of which has not indeed been discovered, but which is to be sought in the Shephelah at no great distance from Marasch, and thus far distant from Hebron. Since, then, Mareshah and Ziph were in the Shephelah, no relation of dependence between the capital, Hebron, situated in the mountains of Judah, and Mareshah can be thought of, neither in more ancient nor in later time. The supposition of such a dependence is not made probable by the remark that we cannot determine to what time the representation of our verse applies; it only serves to cover the difficulty which renders it impossible. That the verse does not treat of post-exilic times is clear, although even after the exile, and in the time of the Maccabees and the Romans, Hebron was not in a position of dependence on Marissa. Bertheau himself holds Caleb, of whose son our verses treat, for a contemporary of Moses and Joshua, because in ver. 49 Achsa is mentioned as daughter of Caleb (Josh. xv. 16; Judg. i. 12). The contents of our verse would therefore have reference to the first part of the period of the judges. But since Hebron was never dependent on Mareshah in the manner supposed, the attempt, which even at first sight appeared so inadmissible, to interpret Mareshah as the name of a city, loses all its support. For this reason, therefore, the city of Hebron, and the other cities named in ver. 43 ff., which perhaps belonged to the district of Mareshah, cannot be the sons of Mareshah here spoken of; and the fact that, of the names mentioned in vers. 43 and 44, at most two may denote cities, while the others are undoubtedly the names of persons, points still more clearly to the same conclusion. We must, then, hold Hebron and Mareshah also to be the names of persons. Now, if the Masoretic text be correct, the use of the phrase, " and the sons of Mareshah the father of Hebron," instead of " and Mareshah, the sons of the father of Hebron," can only have arisen from a desire to point out, that besides Hebron there were also other sons of Mareshah who were of Caleb's lineage. But the mention of the sons of Mareshah, instead of Mareshah, and the calling him the father of Hebron in this connection, make the correctness of the traditional text very questionable. Kimchi has, on account of the harshness of placing the sons of Mareshah on a parallel with Mesha the first-born of Caleb, supposed an ellipse in the expression, and construes 'nro ':z\ 1 1 ex fit '■/ Mareshah. But this addition cannot be justified. If we may venture a conjecture in so obscure a matter, it would more readily suggest itself that n'jn^ is an error for r~"-. and that P-~ *-s is to be taken as a nomen compos,^ when the meaning would be, u and the sons of Mesha were Abi-Hebron." The probability of the existence of such a name as Abihebron along with the simple Hebron has many ib. In the same family even u Abiner, or Abner, the in the shortened form 11. just as we have in Josh. xvi. 8

Tappuah, instead of En-Tappuah, Josh. xvii. 7. The four nan introduced as sons of 11 denote j, not localiti

E&uham, the father oi J< kam. The name -^ i [uite unknown T L X X. i. /. and rtheau therefore h< kam to be the name of a place, and conjectures that originally D| (J lure a Hut the I. XX. cive also 'IeicX following name Dpi, from which it is clear thai much on their authority. The l.X X. i a\ fact that Dpi, yer. 44, is the son of the Hebron menti in yer. 43, whose descendants arc fu Shammai occurs as a man's name also in yer. 28, and is again met with in iv. 17. 11 on is called in yer. 45 Maon, and Maon is the father of Bcthzur. "WJVa is certainly the city in the mountains of Judah which Rehoboam fortified (2 Chron. xi. 7), and which still exists in the ruin Betsur, lying south i f J< rusalem in the direction of Hebron. Maon also was a city in the mountains of Judah, now Main (Josh, xv. 55); but we cannot allow that this city is meant by the name pi"?, because Maon is called on the one hand the son of Shammai, and on the other is father of Bethzur, and there are no well-ascertainod examples of a city being represented as son ( [3) of a man, its founder or lord, nor of one city being called the father of another. Dependent cities and villages are called daughters (not sons) of the mother city. The word jtyO, "dwelling," does not per se point to a village or town, and in Judg. x. 12 denotes a tribe of non-Israelites.

Vers. 46-49. Descendants of Caleb by two concubines. — The name nsNy occurs in ver. 47 and i. 33 as a man's name. Caleb's concubine of this name bore three sons: Haran, of whom nothing further is known; Moza, which, though in Josh, xviii. 26 it is the name of a Benjamite town, is not necessarily on that account the name of a town here: and Gazez, unknown, perhaps a grandson of Caleb, especially if the clause " Haran begat Gazez" be merely an explanatory addition. But Haran may also have given to his son the name of his younger brother, so that a son and grandson of Caleb may have borne the same name. — Ver, 47. The eenealoirical connection of the names in this verse is entirely wanting; for Jahdai, of whom six sons are enumerated, appears quite abruptly. Hiller, in Onomast., supposes, but without sufficient ground, that *W is another name of Moza. Of his sons' names, Jotham occurs frequently of different persons; Ephah, as has been already remarked, is in i. 33 the name of a chief of a Midianite tribe; and lastly, Shaaph is used in ver. 49 of another person. — Ver. 48 f. Another concubine of Caleb was called Maachah, a not uncommon woman's name; cf. iii. 2, vii. 16, viii. 29, xi. 43, etc. She bore Sheber and Tirhanah, names quite unknown. The masc. 1/J instead of the fem. FTO^ ver. 46, is to be explained by the supposition that the father who begat was present to the mind of the wTriter. Ver. 49. Then she bore also Shaaph (different from the Shaaph in ver. 47), the father of Madmannah, a city in the south of Judah, perhaps identical with Miniay or Minieh, southwards from Gaza (see on Josh. xv. 31). Sheva (David's Sopher (scribe) is so called in the Keri of 2 Sam. xx. 25), the father of Machbenah, a village of Judah not further mentioned, and of Gibea, perhaps the Gibeah mentioned in Josh. xv. 57, in the mountains of Judah, or the village Jeba mentioned by Robinson, Palest, ii. p. 327, and Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, S. 157 f., on a hill in the Wady Musurr (vide on Josh. xv. 57). This list closes with the abrupt remark, a and one, that the first njrnn may have been an error of the pen for njhnnn, in which case J^arn does not signify the side room, but is used in a collective sense for the row of side rooms in one story, as in Ezek. xli. 5, 9, 11. That this door was made from the outside, i.e. in the outer wall of the side building, and did not lead into the side rooms " from the interior of the Holy Place," would hardly need a remark, if Bottcher (Proben alttestl. SchrifterJcl. p. 339) and Schnaase (Gesch. der bildenden KiLnste, Bd. 1) had not really supported this view, which is so thoroughly irreconcilable with the dignity of the sanctuary.1 The only question is, whether it was made in the middle of the right side or in the front by the side of the porch. If the Masoretic text is correct, there is no doubt about the former. But if we read fij^™?1], the text leaves the question undecided. The winding staircase was not constructed in the outer wall itself, because this was not thick enough for the purpose, and the text states pretty clearly that it led from the lower story into the middle one, and thence still higher, so that it was in the centre of the building.

In vers. 9 and 10 the description of the exterior of the temple building is brought to a close. " So he built the house, and finished it, and covered the house with beams and boards of cedar." |sp»5 is not to be understood as relating to the internal panelling of the temple-house, for this is spoken of first in the section which follows (ver. 15), but to the roofing; |3D means to conceal (Dent, xxxiii. 21) and cover in all the other passages, even in Hag. i. 4 and Jer. xxii. 14, where P^D is generally, though incorrectly, translated " panelled." As a verb signifying clothing, it is construed with the accusative. B*33 does not mean boards, but beams, though not " an arched covering " (Thenius), because beams cut in the form of an arch would have been too weak in the middle, nor yet rafters (Bottcher), because the roofs of oriental buildings are flat. D<,H^? nil1^, " rows, i. e. tablets (consisting) of cedars," i. e. cedar tablets, which were inserted in rows between the beams. This cedar-work was certainly provided with a strong covering to protect the roof and the building itself against rain; and at the sides it had no doubt a parapet, as in the case of dwelling-houses (Deut. xxii. 8). —

1 The perfectly groundless assumption of Thenius, that the outer building had most probably an inner door as well, which connected it with the temple, does just as much violence to the decorum of the Holy Place.

Ver. 1 0. " And he built the outbuildings to the whole house (i.e. all round the temple-house, with the exception of the front: see ver. 5); five cubits was its height," i.e. the height of each story, the suffix in inoip being made to agree with?Wl through an inaccuracy which has arisen from condensation, although, as in ver. 5, it denotes the whole of the side buildings, which consisted of three stories. The height given must also be understood as referring to the height within. Consequently the side buildings had an internal height of 3 X 5 cubits, and reckoning the floorings and the roof of the whole building an external height of 1 8 or 20 cubits; so that the temple-house, which was thirty cubits high within and about thirty-two without, rose about twelve or fourteen cubits above the side building, and there was plenty of room for the windows in the side walls. 'i:i tflfcW: " and it (the side building) held to the house with cedar beams." The meaning is, that the building was fastened to the house by the joists of the cedar beams belonging to the different stories, which rested upon rebates of the temple wall, so that it was firmly attached to the temple-house, without any injurious insertions into the sanctuary itself. This is apparently the only explanation, that can be grammatically sustained, of words that have received such different interpretations. For the translation given by Thenius, which coincides with this, — viz. " he fastened it (each separate story of the building) to the temple-house with cedar wood, namely, with the cedar beams which formed the flooring and roofing of the three stories," — is exposed to this grammatical objection, that the suffix is wanting in TnJO, and that Tnx is never followed by HK in the sense of with. All the other explanations are unsuitable. ThKl signifies neither " he covered the house " (Chald., Vulg., Luther), nor " he overlaid the house; " moreover, the roofing of the house has been already mentioned in ver. 9, and there is no trace to be found of any overlaying or covering of the outside with cedar wood.

If, therefore, we reckon the thickness of the temple wall at six cubits, and that of the outer wall of the side building and the front wall of the porch at three cubits each, the whole building would be ninety-three cubits long (externally) and forty-eight cubits broad. The height of the temple-house was about thirtytwo cubits externally, and that of the side stories from eighteen to twenty cubits, without the socle upon which the whole building rested. This is not mentioned indeed, as being a subordinate matter, but would certainly not be omitted.1 The number of rooms in the side buildings is not given, but may be set down at thirty in each story, if their length corresponded to their breadth in the lower story. These rooms had of course windows, although they are not mentioned in the account, but each one would have only a small window sufficient to give it the ■requisite light. And as to the number of the temple windows also, we can simply make conjectures. We can hardly assume that there were more than six on each side, and there were probably none at the back.

Vers. 11-13. Phomise of God during the Building of the Temple. — In what way this promise was communicated to Solomon is not more precisely stated. But the expression " And the word of Jehovah came" seems to point to a prophetic medium. And this is in harmony with ch. ix. 2, according to which Jehovah only revealed Himself to Solomon twice by an actual appearance. — Ver. 12. 'til n*nn is placed at the head absolutely: " As for the house which thou art building (nja, a participle), if thou walkest in my statutes,... I will set up my word, which I spake to thy father David." The reference is to the promise in 2 Sam. vii. 1 2 sqq. of the everlasting establishment of his throne. God would fulfil this for Solomon if he would walk in the commandments of the Lord, as his father had already urged upon him when he handed over the kingdom (ch. ii. 3). The promise in ver. 13, " I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel," does not contain a second promise added to the one given in 2 Sam. vii. 1 2 sqq., but simply a special application of it to the building of the temple which had already been commenced. The eternal establishment

1 Thenius, on the other hand, reckons the length of the whole building at a hundred cubits and its breadth at fifty-two, because, on the unfounded assumption that the temple in Ezekiel's vision was simply a copy of Solomon's temple, he sets down the thickness of the temple wall in front and along the two sides at six cubits, and that of the hinder wall at seven. Moreover, he not only reckons the internal length of the house at sixty- two cubits, in opposition to the statement in the text, that the length of the house (which was divided into the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies) was sixty cubits; but in opposition to ver. 16, according to which the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies were separated by boards of cedar, he assumes that there was a wall of two cubits in thickness between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, according to Ezek. xli. 3; and, lastly, for no other reason than the wish to get the round number 100, he takes for granted that the hinder wall of the temple was a cubit thicker than that on the other sides.

of the throne of David involved the dwelling of God among His people, or rather is founded upon it. This dwelling of God is now to receive a new and lasting realization. The temple is to be a pledge that the Lord will maintain for His people His covenant of grace and His gracious presence. In this respect the promise, " I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and not forsake my people Israel," is a confirmation of the word which Jehovah had spoken to David, although, so far as the actual words are concerned, it is more closely connected with Lev. xxvi. 11, when the highest blessing attendant upon the faithful observance of the commandments of God is summed up in the promise, " I will make my abode among you, and my soul will not despise you."

Vers. 14-35. The Internal Arrangements of the Templehouse. — Vers. 14—22. Internal covering of the house, and division into Holy and Most Holy. — Ver. 14 (cf. ver. 9) resumes the description of the building of the temple, which had been interrupted by the divine promise just communicated. — Ver. 15. " He built (i.e., so far as the sense is concerned, he covered) the walls of the house within with boards of cedar; from the floor of the house to the walls of the ceiling he overlaid it with wood within, and overlaid the floor with cypress boards." The expression fiii^jp JSDH, " walls of the ceiling," is very striking here, and renders it probable that HiTp is only a copyist's error for nhip, " beams of the ceiling." The whole of the inside of the house was covered with wood, so that nothing was to be seen of the stone wall (ver. 18). On the other hand, the biblical text knows nothing of any covering of the outer walls also with wTood, as many have assumed. — Vers. 16, 17. "And he built Dn^jrnx rTBK, the twenty cubits (i.e. the space of twenty cubits), of the hindermost side of the house with boards of cedar," from the floor to the beams (of the roof). niTjprny is to be explained from IBDn rriTp ny in ver. 15. "And built them for it (the house — ii? pointing back to i"P3n) into the hinder room, into the Most Holy." "WW is more precisely defined by the apposition Vhp ETIP.l1, and therefore denotes the Most Holy Place. But there is a doubt as to its derivation and true meaning. Aquila and Symmachus render it ^prj/uLartarripiov, Jerome XakrjTrjpcov, or in the Vulg. oraculum, so that they derive it from "OT, to speak; and Hengstenberg adopts this derivation in Ps. xxviii. 2: "WW, lit. that which is spoken, then the place where the speaking takes place. Most of the more recent commentators, on the other hand, follow the example of C. B. Michaelis and J. Simonis, and render it, after the Arabic, the hinder portion or back room, which is favoured by the antithesis ^Bp P3V1, the front sanctuary (ver. 1 7). The words of the text, moreover, are not to be understood as referring to a cedar wall in front of the Most Holy Place which rose to the height of twenty cubits, but to all four walls of the Most Holy Place, so that the wall which divided the hinder room from the Holy Place is not expressly mentioned, simply because it is self-evident. The words also imply that the whole of the hinder space of the house to the length of twenty cubits was cut off for the Most Holy Place, and therefore the party wall must also have filled the whole height of the house, which was as much as thirty cubits, and reached, as is expressly stated, from the floor to the roof. There remained therefore forty cubits of the house (in length) for ^D??ynt the front palace, i.e. the Holy Place of the temple (ver. 17). *?Bj, anterior, formed from *ysb (cf. Ewald, § 164, a). — In ver. 18 there is inserted in a circumstantial clause the statement as to the internal decoration of both rooms; and the further description of the Most Holy Place is given in vers. 1 9 sqq. " And cedar wood was (placed) against the house inside, sculpture of gourds (colocynthides) and open buds." npppo is in apposition to PK, containing a more minute description of the nature of the covering of cedar. flPpP signifies sculpture, half-raised work (basso relievo); not, however, " that kind of bas-relief in which the figures, instead of rising above the surface on which they are wrought, are simply separated from it by the chiselling out of their outlines, and their being then rounded off according to these outlines" (Thenius). For although the expression rriy^pp *nvi9 (ver. 29) appears to favour this, yet "merely engraved work" does not harmonize with the decorations of the brazen stands in ch. vii. 31, which are also called Hfo6pp. D^ijs are figures resembling the rfyi?3, or wild gourds (2 Kings iv, 39), i.e. oval ornaments, probably running in straight rows along the walls. 0^ *!*&? are open flower-buds; not hangings or garlands of flowers (Thenius), for this meaning cannot be derived from ">Bfi in the sense of loosening or setting free, so as to signify flowers loosened or set free (= garlands), which would be a marvellous expression! The objection that, "according to Num. xvii. 23, flowers not yet opened, i.e. flower-buds, were not MS, but t^rns," rests upon a false interpretation of the passage referred to. — Ver. 19. "And (= namely) he prepared a hinder room in the house within, to place the ark of the covenant of Jehovah there." pn, as ch. xvii. 14 shows, is not a future (id reponeres), but the infinitive nn with a repeated syllable jn (see Ewald, § 238, c). — Ver. 20. "And the interior of the hinder room was twenty cubits the length, twenty cubits the breadth, and twenty cubits its height." The word ^Q? I agree with Kimchi in regarding as the construct state of the noun D^s?, which occurs again in ver. 29 in the sense of the inner part or interior, as is evident from the antithesis |fa™ (on the outside). "And he overlaid it with fine gold." "MD 3tI (— "^*l? ^ J°b xxviii. 1 5) unquestionably signifies fine or costly gold, although the derivation of this meaning is still questionable; viz. whether it is derived from "UD in the sense of to shut up, i.e. gold shut up or carefully preserved, after the analogy of ona; or is used in the sense of taking out or selecting, i.e. gold selected or pure; or in the sense of closed, i.e. gold condensed or unadulterated (Furst and Delitzsch on Job xxviii. 15).

The Most Holy Place had therefore the form of a perfect cube in the temple as well as in the tabernacle, only on an enlarged scale. Now, as the internal elevation of the house, i.e. of the whole of the temple-house, the hinder portion of which formed the Most Holy Place, was thirty cubits, there was a space of about ten cubits in height above the Most Holy Place and below the roof of the temple-house for the upper rooms mentioned in 2 Chron. iii. 9, on the nature and purpose of which nothing is said in the two accounts.1 " And he overlaid (clothed) the altar with cedar wood." There is something very striking in the allusion to the altar in this passage, since the verse itself treats simply of the Most Holy Place; and still more striking is the expression TO 1K>'{* nam>n^ "the altar belonging to the Debir" in ver. 22, since there was no altar in the Most Holy

1 This upper room does not presuppose, however, that the party wall, which follows as a matter of course from ver. 16, was not merely a cedar wall, but a wall two cubits thick. The supposed difficulty of setting up a cedar wall thirty cubits high is not so great as to necessitate assumptions opposed to the text. For we cannot possibly see why it could not have been made secure " without injuring the temple wall." The wood panelling must have been nailed firmly to the wall without injuring the wall itself; and therefore this could be done just as well in the case of the cedar beams or boards of the party wall.

Place. We cannot remove the strangeness of these sentences by such alterations as Thenius and Bottcher propose, because the alterations suggested are much too complicated to appear admissible. The allusion to the altar in both these verses is rather to be explained from the statements in the Pentateuch as to the position of the altar of incense; viz. Ex. xxx. 6, " Thou shalt place it before the curtain, which is above the ark of the testimony before the capporeth over the testimony; " and Ex. xl. 5, "before the ark of the testimony;" whereby this altar, although actually standing " before the inner curtain," i.e. in the Holy Place, according to Ex. xl. 26, was placed in a closer relation to the Most Holy Place than the other two things which were in the Holy Place. The clothing of the altar with cedar presupposes that it had a heart of stone; and the omission of the article before nsTD may be explained on the ground that it is mentioned here for the first time, just as in ver. 16, where "pan was first mentioned, it had no article. — Ver. 21. To the gilding of the Most Holy Place, and the allusion to the altar of incense, which in a certain sense belonged to it, there is now appended in ver. 2 1 the gilding of the Holy Place. " Solomon overlaid the house from within with fine gold." HD^qd JT3n cannot be the party wall between the Holy Place and the Most Holy, as I formerly supposed, but is the Holy Place as distinguished from the Most Holy. The following words 'W 1?$5 are very obscure. If we rendered them, " he caused to pass over in (with) golden chains before the hinder room," we could only think of an ornament consisting of golden chains, which ran along the wall in front of the hinder room and above the folding doors. But this would be very singularly expressed. We must therefore take Tap, as Gesenius, de Wette, and many of the earlier commentators do, according to the Chaldaean usage in the sense of bolting or fastening: " he bolted (fastened) with golden chains before the hinder room; " and must assume with Merz and others that the doors into the Most Holy Place (except on the day of atonement) were closed and fastened with golden chains, which were stretched across the whole breadth of the door and stood out against the wall.1 — The following expres-

1 The conjecture of Thenius, that rDhaiTTlK (the curtain) has dropped out of the text and should be restored ("he carried the curtain across with golden chains "), is very properly described by Merz as " certainly untenable," since, apart from the fact that not one of the older versions contains sion, 3HJ VUftW,"and lie overlaid it with gold," can only refer to the altar mentioned in the previous verse, the gilding of which has not yet been noticed, however surprising the separation of those words from ver. 20 may be. — In ver. 22 what has already been stated with regard to the gilding is repeated once more in a comprehensive manner, which brings this subject to a close. The whole house (n^n-^i)) is the Holy Place and the Most Holy, but not the porch or hall, as this is expressely distinguished from the house. fl?!^?, the whole altar, not merely a portion of it.

Vers. 23—28. The large cherub- figures in the Most llobj Place. — Ver. 23. He made (caused to be made) in the hinder room two cherubs of olive wood, i.e. wood of the oleaster or wild olivetree, which is very firm and durable, and, according to 2 Ohron. iii. 10, B^TO* nbro^ i.e., according to the Vulgate, opus statuarium, a peculiar kind of sculpture, which cannot be more precisely defined, as the meaning of Xfl¥ is uncertain. " Ten cubits was the height of it" (i.e. of the one and of the other). The figures had a human form, like the golden cherubs upon the ark of the covenant, and stood upright upon their feet (2 Chron. iii. 13), with extended wings of five cubits in length, so that one wing of the one reached to one wing of the other in the centre of the room, and the other wing of each reached to the opposite wall, and consequently the four extended wings filled the entire breadth of the Most Holy Place (a breadth of twenty cubits), and the two cherubs stood opposite to one another and ten cubits apart. The wings were evidently fastened to the back and placed close to one another upon the shoulder-blades, so that the small space between their starting-points is not taken into consideration in the calculation of their length. The figures were completely overlaid with gold. The ark of the covenant was placed between these cherubs, and under the wings which pointed towards one another. As they were made like those upon the ark, they had evidently the same meaning, and simply served to strengthen the idea which was symbolized in the cherub, and which we have expounded in the Com- the missing words, chains would have impeded the moving of the curtain. It is true that, according to 2 Chron. iii. 14, there was a curtain before the Most Holy Place; but as it is not mentioned so early as this even in the Chronicles, this would not be its proper position in the account before us, but it would be most suitably mentioned either in connection with or after the reference to the doors of the Most Holy Place in vers. 31 aud 32.

mentary on Ex. xxv. 20 sqq. Only their faces were not turned towards one another and bent down towards the ark, as in the case of the golden cherubim of the ark; but, according to 2 Chron. iii. 13, they were turned n???, towards the house, i.e. the Holy Place, so as to allow of the extension of the wings along the full length of the Most Holy Place.

Vers. 29— 35. Ornaments of the walls; the floors and doors. — Ver. 29. All the walls of the house (the Holy Place and the Most Holy) round about (3pp, adverb) he made engraved work (carving) of cherubs, palms, and open flowers from within to the outside {i.e. in the Most Holy as well as in the Holy Place). b).. \o = b«.. ]D; and mtb as in ver. 20. This completes the account of the nature of the covering of wood. In addition to the oval figures and open flowers (ver. 18), there were also figures of cherubim and palm-trees carved in the wooden panels. Nothing is said as to the distribution of these figures. But a comparison with Ezek. xli. 18 shows at any rate so much, that the palmtrees alternated with the cherubs, so that there was always one cherub standing between two palm-trees. The gourd-shaped figures and the open flowers probably formed the upper and lower setting of the rows of palms and cherubs, the flowers hanging in the form of garlands above the palms and cherubs, and the rows of gourds arranged in bars constituting the boundary lines both above and below. It is a disputed question whether there was only one row of palms and cherubs running round the walls, or whether there were two, or possibly even three. There is more probability in the second or third of these assumptions than in the first, inasmuch as on the walls of the Egyptian temples there were often three or four rows of mythological characters in relief arranged one above another (compare my work on the Temple, pp. 70 sqq.). — Ver. 30. The floor of the house he overlaid with gold within and without, i.e. in the Most Holy Place and in the Holy Place also. — Vers. 31, 32. He made the entrance to the back room, doors (i.e. consisting of doors; cf. Ewald, § 284, a, /3) of olive wood, which moved, according to ch. vii. 5 0, on golden hinges, tfl tyxn, " the projection of the door-posts was a fifth " (rrintp is construed freely as an explanatory apposition to *!$}, to which it is really subordinate; cf. Ewald, § 290, e). These obscure words, which have been interpreted in very different ways (see Ges. Thes. pp. 43 sq.), can hardly have any other meaning than this: the projecting framework of the doors occupied the fifth part of the breadth of the wall. For the explanation given by Bottcher and Thenius, " the entrance framework with posts of fifth strength," has no real support in Ezek. xli. 3. To justify the rendering given to JWpn (fifth strength), 7JKH is supplied, though not in the sense of projection, but in the thoroughly unwarranted sense of strength or thickness of the wall; and in addition to this, a wall two cubits thick is postulated between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, in direct contradiction to ver. 1G. The further evidence, which Thenius finds in ch. viii. 8, in support of this explanation, has been already rejected by Bottcher as unsustained. It would indeed be extremely strange for the thickness of the doorposts which formed the setting of the entrance to be given, whereas nothing is said about the size of the doors. According to our explanation, " a fifth of the breadth of the wall," the entrance was four cubits broad including the projecting doorposts, and each of the two wings of the folding doors about a cubit and a half broad, if we reckon the projecting framework on either side at half a cubit in breadth. — Ver. 32. " And two doors {i.e. folding doors, sc. he made; *flf* is also governed by n'vy in ver. 31) of olive wood, and carved upon them carved work," etc., as upon the walls (ver. 29), " and overlaid them with gold, spreading the gold upon the cherubs and palms " (TJJ, hiphil of TTJ), i.e. he spread gold-leaf upon them, so that, as Kashi observes, all the figures, the elevations and depressions of the carved work, were impressed upon the coating of gold-leaf, and were thus plainly seen. Thenius infers from this explanatory clause, that the gilding upon the walls and doors was most probably confined to the figures engraved, and did not extend over the whole of the walls and doors, because, if the doors had been entirely overlaid with gold, the gilding of the carved work upon them would have followed as a matter of course. But this inference is a very doubtful one. For if it followed as a matter of course from the gilding of the entire doors that the carved work upon them was overlaid with gold, it would by no means follow that the overlaying was such as to leave the carved work visible or prominent, which this clause affirms. Moreover, a partial gilding of the walls would not coincide with the expression jVnrn?3 orny in ver. 22, since these words, which are used with emphasis, evidently affirm more than " that such (partial) gilding was carried out everywhere throughout the temple proper.1'

Th3 doors in front of the Most Holy Place did not render the curtain mentioned in 2 Chron. iii. 14 unnecessary, as many suppose. This curtain may very well have been suspended within the doors; so that even when the doors were opened outwards on the entrance of the high priest, the curtain formed a second covering, which prevented the priests who were ministering in the Holy Place and court from looking in.1 — Vers. 33, 34. "And thus he made upon the door of the Holy Place posts of olive wood from a fourth (of the wall)," i.e. a framework which occupied a fourth of the breadth of the wall, or was five cubits broad (see at ver. 3 1), " and two doors of cypress wood, two leaves each door turning," i.e. each of the folding doors consisting of two leaves, each of which was made to turn by itself, so that it could be opened and shut alone (without the other; CV/P is probably only a copyist's error for WyXt). Cypress wood was chosen for the folding doors of the Holy Place, and not olive wood, as in the case of the Most Holy Place, probably because it is lighter in weight, and therefore less likely to sink. It is questionable here what idea we are to form of the division of each folding door into two leaves, each of which turned by itself: whether we are to think of each wing as divided lengthwise into two narrow leaves, or as divided half way up, so that the lower half could be opened without the upper. I agree with Merz in thinking the latter the more probable assumption; for the objection made by Thenius, on the ground that doors of this kind are only seen in the houses of the peasantry, is an idle assertion which cannot be proved. In a doorway of five cubits in breadth, after reckoning the doorposts the width of the two wings could not be more than two cubits each. And if such a door had been divided into two halves, each half would have been only one cubit wide, so that when open it would not have furnished the requisite room for one man conveniently to pass through. On the other hand, we may assume that a folding door of four cubits in breadth, if made in just proportions, would be eight cubits high. And a door of such a height might easily be

1 H. Merz (Herzog's Cycl.) now admits this, whereas he formerly agreed with Ewald and others in denying the existence of the curtain in Solomon's temple, and regarded the curtain (veil) in Matt, xxvii. 51, 52 as an arbitrary addition made by Herod out of his princely caprice, thus overlooking the deep symbolical meaning which the veil or curtain possessed.

divided into two halves, so that only the lower half (of two cubits in breadth and about four in height) was opened for the daily cut ranee of the priests into the Holy Place. These doors probably opened outwards, like those in front of the Most Holy Place. — Ver. 35. Carving and gilding: as upon the doors before the hinder room. The gold was levelled or smoothed over that which had been engraved, i.e. it was beaten out thin and laid upon the carving in such a manner that the gold plate fitted closely to the figures. Gilding was generally effected in ancient times by the laying on of gold plate, which was fastened with tacks (compare 2 Chron. iii. 9).

Ver. 36. The courts. — " He built the inner court three rows of hewn stones and one row of hewn cedar beams." The epithet inner court applied to the " court of the priests" (2 Chron. iv. 9) presupposes an outer one, which is also mentioned in 2 Chron. iv. 9, and called " the great court." The inner one is called the upper (higher) court in Jer. xxxvi. 10, from which it follows that it was situated on a higher level than the outer one, which surrounded it on all sides. It wras enclosed by a low wrall, consisting of three rows of hewn stones, or square stones, laid one upon another, and a row of hewn cedar beams, which were either laid horizontally upon the stones, after the analogy of the panelling of the temple walls on the inside, or placed upright so as to form a palisading, in order that the people might be able to see through into the court of the priests. According to 2 Chron. iv. 9, the outer court had gates lined with brass, so that it was also surrounded with a high wall. Around it there were chambers and cells (2 Kings xxiii. 1 1; Jer. xxxv. 4, xxxvi. 10) for the priests and Levites, the plans for which had already been made by David (1 Chron. xxviii. 12). The principal gate was the east gate (Ezek. xi. 1). Other gates are mentioned in 2 Kings xi. 6, 2 Chron. xxiii. 5, Jer. xx. 2, 2 Kings xii. 10, 2 Chron. xxiv. 8. The size of these courts is not given. At the same time, following the analogy of the tabernacle, and with the reduplication of the rooms of the tabernacle which is adopted in other cases in the temple, we may set down the length of the court of the priests from east to west at 200 cubits, and the breadth from south to north at 1 0 0 cubits; so that in front of the temple-building on the east there was a space of 100 cubits in length and breadth, or 10,000 square cubits, left free for the altar of burnt-offering and the other vessels, in other words, for the sacrificial worship. The outer or great court will therefore, no doubt, have been at least twice as large, namely, 400 cubits long and 200 cubits broad, i.e., in all, 80,000 square cubits; so that the front space before the court of the priests (on the eastern side) was 150 cubits long from east to west, and 200 cubits broad from south to north, and £0 cubits in breadth or depth still remained for the other three sides.

Vers. 37, 38. The time consumed in huilding. — The foundation was laid in the fourth year in the month Ziv (see ver. 1), and it was finished in the eleventh year in the month Bid, i.e. the eighth month, so that it was built in seven years, or, more precisely, seven years and a half, " according to all its matters and all its due." ^3 for 7&\ signifies proventus; te ITV is therefore the fruit month, the month of tree fruits. The name probably originated with the Phoenicians, with whom the fruit ripened later; and it is said to be found upon the great Sidonian inscription (compare Dietrich on Ges. Lex. s.v.). For other explanations see Ges. Thes. p. 560. In comparison with other large buildings of antiquity,1 and also of modern times, the work was executed in a very short time. But we must bear in mind that the building was not a very large one, notwithstanding all its splendour; that an unusually large number of workmen were employed upon it; and that the preparation of the materials, more especially the hewing of the stones, took place at Lebanon, and for the most part preceded the laying of the foundation of the temple, so that this is not to be included in the seven years and a half. Moreover, the period mentioned probably refers to the building of the temple-house and court of the priests only, and to the general arrangement of the outer court, and does not include the completion of the underground works which were necessary to prepare the space required for them, and of which only a portion may have been carried out by Solomon.2

1 According to Pliny (H. N. 36, c. 14), all Asia was building at the celebrated temple of Diana at Ephesus for 220 years.

2 The account given by Josephus of these substructures does not show very clearly how much originated with Solomon, and how much belongs to the following centuries. At the close of his description of Solomon's temple (Ant. viii. 3, 9), he states that, in order to obtain the same level for the Z&Qiu ispou, i.e. the outer court of the temple, as that of the veto;, he had large valleys rilled up, into which it was difficult to look down on account of their depth, by raising the ground to the height of 400 cubits, so as to make them

The importance of the temple is clearly expressed in ch. viii. 13, 27, ix. 3, 2 Chron. vi. 2, and other passages. It was to be a house built as the dwelling-place for Jehovah, a place for His seat for ever; not indeed in any such sense as that the house could contain God within its space, when the heavens of heavens cannot contain Him (ch. viii. 27), but a house where the name of Jehovah is or dwells (ch. viii. 1 6 sqq.; 2 Chron. vi. 5; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 13, etc.), i.e. where God manifests His presence in level with the top of the mountain; and in the de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1, after describing the temple-mountain as a mighty hill, the summit of which hardly sufficed for the temple-house and altar when the building was commenced, because it sloped off on all sides, he adds: " Solomon therefore

caused a wall to be raised on the eastern side, and had a porch built upon the ground that was heaped up, and on the other sides the temple (vuoi) was naked (yvfA»6i).n But in the description of the temple of Herod {Ant. xv. 11, 3) he says: "The temple was surrounded by enormous porticos (<jto*i), which rested upon a large wall, and were the largest work of which men have ever heard. It was a steep rocky hill, rising gradually towards the eastern part of the city up to the highest point. This hill Solomon surrounded with a wall by very great works up to the very apex, and walled it round, commencing at the root, which is surrounded by a deep ravine, with stones which wrere fastened together with lead,... and continuing to the top, so that the size and height of the building, which was completed as a square, were immense," etc. The flat obtained in this manner is then described by Jose-

phus as a ^tpij3o^og of four stadia in circumference, namely, one stadium on each side. Now, although it was the outer court of the temple of Herod (the court of the Gentiles) which first had this circumference (see my bibl. Archdol. i. pp. 143, 144), and Josephus, de Bell. Jud. v. 5, 1, relates that subsequently (rolg f|ij? uiuaiv) the levelling of the hill was carried out to even a greater extent, as the people still continued to heap up earth, it is quite conceivable that Solomon may have planned the area of the temple with this circumference. And this conjecture acquires great probability from the fact that, according to the researches of Robinson (Pal. i. pp. 420 sqq.; Recent Investigations concerning the Topography of Jerusalem, pp. 68 sqq.; and Later Biblical Researches, pp. 173 sqq.), there are layers of enormous square stones in the lowest part of the south-western and south-eastern corners of the present Haram wall, the dimensions of which, apart from the fact that they are hewn with grooved edges, point to an early Israelitish origin, so that they might very well be relics of the Solomonian substructures of the templehill. There is also the remnant of the arch of a bridge of the same construction on the southern portion of the western wall of the Haram, which points to a bridge that led across from Moriah to Zion, and u appears to remove all the objections to the identity of this part of the enclosure of the mosque with that of the ancient temple" (Rob. Pal. i. p. 426). " Here then," adds Robinson (Pal. i. pp. 427, 428), " we have indisputable remains of Jewish antiquity, consisting of an important portion of the western wall of