1 Yet at a very early time, for the LXX. had before them our present text, and sought to make sense of it by expressing the four times recurring ija ver. 216, by the singular faa in every case, as follows: xotl 'Uolet; vlog ocvtou, 'FxQkX vtog ctvTov,'Opvcc vlo; otvrov, etc.; according to which, between Hananiah and Shecaniah seven consecutive generations would be enumerated, and Zerubbabel's family traced down through eleven generations. So also Vulg. and Syr.
descendants of Zerubbabel there enumerated coincides with the names given in our verses, we may conclude that the descendants of Shecaniah enumerated in vers. 22-24 did not descend from Zerubbabel in a direct line. Intermediate members are, it is true, often omitted in genealogical lists; but who would maintain that in Matthew seven, or, according to the other interpretation of our verse, nine, consecutive members have been at one bound overleapt? This weighty consideration, which has been brought forward by Clericus, is passed over in silence by the defenders of the opinion that our verses contain a continuation of the genealogy of Zerubbabel. The only other remark to be made about this fragment is, that in ver. 22 the number of the sons of Shecaniah is given as six, while only five names are mentioned, and that consequently a name must have fallen out by mistake in transcribing. Nothing further can be said of these families, as they are otherwise quite unknown.
genealogical fragments which follow. Five names are mentioned as sons of Judah, of whom only Pharez was his son (ii. 4); the others are grandchildren or still more distant descendants.
Nothing is said as to the genealogical relationship in which they stood to each other; that is supposed to be already known from the genealogies in chap. ii. Hezron is the son of Pharez, and consequently grandson of Judah, ii. 8. Carmi, a descendant of is that the families registered in the following lists traced their origin to them, although in the enumeration which follows the genealogical connection of the various groups is not clearly brought out. The enumeration begins,
Ver. 2, with the descendants of Shobal. As to Reaiah the son of Shobal, see ii. 52. He begat Jahath, a name often occurring in Levite families, cf. vi. 5, 28, xxiii. 10 ff., xxiv. 22, 2 Chron. xxxiv. 12; but of the descendant of David who bore this name nothing further is known. His sons Ahumai and Lahad founded the families of the Zorathites, i.e. the inhabitants of Zora, who also, according to ii. 53, were descended from sons of Shobal. Our verse therefore gives more detailed information regarding the lineage of these families.
Vers. 3 and 4 contain notices of the descendants of Hur. The first words of the third verse, u these, father of Etam, Jezreel," have no meaning; but the last sentence of the second verse suggests that Tfift&WD should be supplied, when we read, " and these are the families of (from) Abi-Etam." The LXX. and Vulgate have DLTj; *32 r6x, which is also to be found in several codices, while other codices read Dt^y 'ON *33 r6tf. Both readings are probably only conjectures. Whether Dtry OK is to be taken as the name of a person, or appellatively, father— lord of Etam, cannot be decided. D^y is in ver. 32, and probably also in Judg. xv. 8, 11, the name of a town of the Simeonites; and in 2 Chron. xi. 6, the name of a little town in the highlands of Judah, south of Jerusalem. If Di^y be the name of a place, only the last named can be here meant. The names Jezreel, Ishma, and Idbash denote persons as progenitors and head of families or branches of families. For J&TWl as the name of a person, cf. Hos. i. 4. That these names should be those of persons is required by the succeeding remark, " and their sister Hazelelponi." The formation of this name, with the derivative termination if seems to express a relationship of race; bu* the word may also be an adjective, and as such may be a proper name: cf. Ew. § 273, e. — Ver. 4. Penuel, in Gen. xxii. 31 f., Judg. viii. 8, name of a place in the East- Jordan land, as here, and in viii. 25 the name of a man. Gedor is, we may suppose, the town of that name in the mountains of Judah, which is still to be found in the ruin Jedur (see on Josh. xv. 58). Penuel is here called father of Gedor, while in ver. 18 one Jered is so called, whence we must conclude that the inhabitants of Gedor were descended from both. Ezer (Help) occurs in vii. 21, xii. 9, Neh. iii. 19, of other men; father of Hushah, i.e. according to the analogy of Abi-Gedor, also the name of a place not elsewhere mentioned, where the hero Sibbecai had his birth, xi. 29, 2 Sam. xxiii. 27. Those thus named in vers. 3 and 4 are sons of Hur, the first-born of Ephratah (ii. 19), the father of Bethlehem. The inhabitants of Bethlehem then, according to this, were descended from Ilur through his son Salma, who is called in ii. 51 father of Bethlehem. The circumstance, too, that in our verses (3 and 4) other names of persons are enumerated as descendants of Hur than those given in ii. 50-55 gives rise to no discrepancy, for there is no ground for the supposition that in ii. 50-55 all the descendants of Hur have been mentioned.
Vers. 5-7. Sons ofAshur, the father of Tekoa, who, according to ii. 24, was a posthumous son of Hezron. Ashur had two wives, Helah and Naarah. Of the latter came four sons and as many families: Ahuzam, of whom nothing further is known; Hepher, also unknown, but to be distinguished from the Gileadite of the same name in chap. xi. 36 and Num. xxvi. 32 f. The conjecture that the name is connected with the land of Hepher (1 Kings iv. 10), the territory of a king conquered by Joshua (Josh. xii. 17) (Berth.), is not very well supported. Temani (man of the south) may be simply the name of a person, but it is probably, like the following, the name of a family. Haahashtari, descended from Ahashtar, is quite unknown. — Ver. 7. The first wife, Helah, bore three sons, Zereth, Jezoar, and Ethnan, who are not elsewhere met with. For the Kethibh "irfeP there is in the Keri "inVl, the name of a son of Simeon (Gen. xlvi. 10), and of a Hittite chief in the time of the patriarchs (Gen. xxiii. 8), with whom the son of Helah has nothing to do.
Vers. 8-10 contain a fragment, the connection of which with the sons of Judah mentioned in chap. ii. is not clear. Coz begat Anub, etc. The name pp occurs only here; elsewhere only PP" is found, of a Levite, xxiv. 10, cf. Ezra ii. 61 and Neh. iii. 4, — in the latter passage without any statement as to the tribe to which the sons of Hakkoz belonged. The names of the sons begotten by Coz, ver. 8, do not occur elsewhere. The same is to be said of Jabez, of whom we know nothing beyond what is communicated in vers. 9 and 10. The word Y^V] donotes in ii. 55 a town or village which is quite unknown to us; but whether our Jabez were father (lord) of this town cannot be determined. If there be any genealogical connection between the man Jabez and the locality of this name or its inhabitants (ii. 55), then the persons named in ver. 8 would belong to the descendants of Shobal. For although the connection of Jabez with Coz and his sons is not clearly set forth, yet it may bo conjectured from the statements as to Jabez being connected with the preceding by the words, " Jabez was more honoured than his brethren." The older commentators have thence drawn the conclusion that Jabez was a son or brother of Coz.
Bertheau also rightly remarks: "The statements that he was more honoured than his brethren (cf. Gen. xxxiv. 19), that his mother called him Jabez because she had borne him with sorrow; the use of the similarly sounding word 2>*'V along with the name mi (cf. Gen. iv. 25, xix. 37 f., xxix. 32, 33, 35, xxx. 6, 8, etc.); and the statement that Jabez vowed to the God of Israel (cf. Gen. xxxiii. 20) in a prayer (cf. Gen. xxviii. 20), — all bring to our recollection similar statements of Genesis, and doubtless rest upon primeval tradition." In the terms of the vow, w20
*5W?j " so that sorrow may not be to me," there is a play upon the name Jabez. But of the vow itself only the conditions proposed by the maker of the vow are communicated: "If Thou wilt bless me, and enlarge my coast, and Thy hand shall be with me, and Thou wilt keep evil far off, not to bring sorrow to me," — without the conclusion, Then I vow to do this or that (cf. Gen. xxviii. 20 f.), but with the remark that God granted him that which he requested. The reason of this is probably that the vow had acquired importance sufficient to make it worthy of being handed down only from God's having so fulfilled his wish, that his life became a contradiction of his name; the son of sorrow having been free from pain in life, and having attained to greater happiness and reputation than his brothers.
Vers. 11, 12. The genealogy of the men of Rechah. — As to their connection with the larger families of Judah, nothing has been handed down to us. Chelub, another form of the name Caleb or Chelubai (see ii. 9 and 18), is distinguished from the better known Caleb son of Hezron (ii. 18 and 42), and from the son of Jephunneh (ver. 15), by the additional clause, " the son of Shuah." Shuah is not met with elsewhere, but is without reason identified with Hushah, ver. 4, by the older commentators. Mehir the father of Eshton is likewise unknown. Eshton begat the house (the family) of Rapna, of whom also nothing further is said; for they can be connected neither with the Benjamite Kapha (viii. 2) nor with the children of Kapha (xx. 4, 6, 8). Paseah and Tehinnah are also unknown, for it is uncertain whether the sons of Paseah mentioned among the Nethinim, Ezra ii. 49, Neh. vii. 51, have any connection with our Paseah. Tehinnah is called " father of the city of Nahash." The latter name is probably not properly the name of a town, but rather the name of a person Nahash, not unlikely the same as the father of Abigail (2 Sam. xvii. 25), the step-sister of David (cf. ii. 16). The men (or people) of Rechah are unknown.
Vers. 13-15. Descendants of Kenaz. — Wj? is a descendant of Hezron the son of Pharez, as may be inferred from the fact that Caleb the son of Jephunneh, a descendant of Hezron's son Caleb, is called in Num. xxxii. 12 and Josh. xiv. 6 vpf?, and consequently was also a descendant of Kenaz. Othniel and Seraiah, introduced here as Wj? *J3, are not sons (in the narrower sense of the word), but more distant descendants of Kenaz; for Othniel and Caleb the son of Jephunneh were, according to Josh. xv. 17 and Judg. i. 13, brothers.1 Kenaz, therefore, can neither have been the father of Othniel nor father of Caleb (in the proper sense of the word), but must at least have been the grandfather or great-grandfather of both. Othniel is the famous first judge of Israel, Judg. iii. 9 ff. Of Seraiah nothing further is known, although the name is often met with of different persons. The sons of Othniel are Hathath. The plural
1 The words used in Judg. i. 13, cf. Josh. xv. 17, of the relationship of Othniel and Caleb, jiDpn 2^3 TIK T3p"p may be, it is true, taken in different senses, either as signifying filius Kenasi fratris Caleb, according to which, not Othniel, but Kenaz, was a younger brother of Caleb; or in this way, films Kenasi, f rater Calebi minor, as we have interpreted them in the text, and also in the commentary on Josh. xv. 17. This interpretation we still hold to be certainly the correct one, notwithstanding what Bachmann (Buck der Richter, on i. 13) has brought forward against it and in favour of the other interpretation, and cannot see that his chief reasons are decisive. The assertion that we must predicate of Othniel, if he be a younger brother of Caleb, an unsuitably advanced age, is not convincing. Caleb was eighty-five years of age at the division of the land of Canaan (Josh. xiv. 10). Now if we suppose that his younger or youngest brother Othniel was from twenty-five to thirty years younger, as often happens, Othniel would be from sixty to sixtyone or fifty-five to fifty-six years of age at the conquest of Debir, — an age at which he might well win a wife as the reward of valour. Ten years later came the invasion of the land by Cushan Rishathaim, which lasted eight years, till Othniel had conquered Cushan R., and there were judges in Israel. This victory he would thus gain at the age of seventy-eight or seventy-three; and even if he filled the office of judge for forty years — which, however, Judg. iii. 11 does not state — he would have reached no greater age than 118 or 113 years, only three or eight years older than Joshua had been. If we consider what Caleb said of himself in his eighty-fifth year, Josh. xiv. 11, "I am still strong as in the day that Moses sent me {i.e. forty years before); as my strength was then, even so is my strength now for war, both to go out and to come in," we cannot think that Othniel, in the seventy-third or seventy-
*J3, even when only one name follows, is met with elsewhere {vide on ii. 7); but the continuation is somewhat strange, " and Meonothai begat Ophrah," for as Meonothai is not before mentioned, his connection with Othniel is not given. There is evidently a hiatus in the text, which may most easily be filled up by repeating TibiyEH at the end of ver. 13. According to this conjecture two sons of Othniel would be named, Hathath and Meonothai, and then the posterity of the latter is given. The name *ri3ijJD (my dwellings) is not met with elsewhere. It is not at all probable that it is connected with the town Maon, and still less that it is so in any way with the Mehunim, Ezra ii. 50. Ophrah is unknown, for of course we must not think of the towns called Ophrah, in the territory of Benjamin, Josh, xviii. 23, and in that of Manasseh, Judg. vi. 11, 24. Seraiah, who is mentioned in ver. 13, begat Joab the father (founder) of the valley of the craftsmen, u for they (i.e. the inhabitants of this valley, who were descended from Joab) were craftsmen." The valley of the D^Khn (craftsmen) is again mentioned in Neh. xi. 35, eighth years of his age, was too old to be a military leader. But the other reason: " that Caleb is always called son of Jephunneh, Othniel always son of Kenaz, should cause us to hesitate before we take Othniel to be the proper brother of Caleb," loses all its weight when we find that Caleb also is called in Num. xxxii. 12 and Josh. xiv. 6 »T3p=Wp1Sl, and it is seen that Caleb therefore, as well as Othniel, was a son of Kenaz. Now if the Kenazite Caleb the son of Jephunneh were a brother of Kenaz, the father of Othniel, we must suppose an older Kenaz, the grandfather or great-grandfather of Caleb, and a younger Kenaz, the father of Othniel. This supposition is certainly feasible, for, according to ver. 15 of our chapter, a grandson of Caleb again was called Kenaz; but if it be probable is another question. For the answering of this question in the affirmative, Bachmann adduces that, according to 1 Chron. iv. 13, Othniel is undoubtedly the son of Kenaz in the proper sense of the word; but it might perhaps be difficult to prove, or even to render probable, this "undoubtedly." In the superscriptions of the single genealogies of the Chronicle, more than elsewhere, 133 has in general a very wide signification. In ver. 1 of our chapter, for instance, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of Judah are all grouped together as rWP *32- ^ut besides this, the ranging of the sons of Caleb the son of Jephunneh (ver. 15) after the enumeration of the sons of Kenaz in vers. 13 and 14, is clearly much more easily explicable if Caleb himself belonged to the fjp ija mentioned in ver. 13, than if he was a brother of Kenaz. In the latter case we should expect, after the analogy of ii. 42, to find an additional clause up ^ntf after n3D,,"|l 2^3; while if Caleb was a brother of Othniel, his descent from Kenaz, or the fact that he belonged to the Up ^3, might be assumed to be known from Num. xxxii. 12.
whence we may conclude that it lay at no great distance from Jerusalem, in a northern direction. — Ver. 15. Of Iru, Elah, and Naam, the sons of Caleb the son of Jephunneh (cf. on ver. 13), nothing more is known. To connect Elah with the Edomite chief of that name (i. 52) is arbitrary. Of Elah's sons only a and Kenaz" is mentioned; the 1 copul. before T3j5 shows clearly that a name has been dropped out before it.
Vers. 16-20. Descendants of various men7 whose genealogical connection with the sons and grandsons of Judah, mentioned in ver. 1, is not given in the text as it has come to us. — Ver. 16. Sons of Jehaleleel, a man not elsewhere mentioned. Ziph, Ziphah, etc., are met with only here. There is no strong reason for connecting the name *W with the towns of that name, Josh. xv. 24, 55. — Ver. 17. Ezra, whose four sons are enumerated, is likewise unknown. The singular |2 is peculiar, but has analogies in iii. 19, 21, and 23. Of the names of his sons, Jether and Epher again occur, the former in ii. 53, and the latter in i. 33 and v. 24, but in other families. Jalon, on the contrary, is found only here. The children of two wives of Mered are enumerated in vers. 176 and 18, but in a fashion which is quite unintelligible, and shows clear traces of a corruption in the text. For (1) the name of a woman as subject of "^1, " and she conceived (bare)," is wanting; and (2) in ver. 18 the names of two women occur, Jehudijah and Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh. But the sons of Jehudijah are first given, and there follows thereupon the formula, " and these are the sons of Bithiah," without any mention of the names of these sons. This manifest confusion Bertheau has sought to remove by a happy transposition of the words. He suggests that the words, il and these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered had taken," should be placed immediately after JCT. " By this means we obtain (1) the missing subject of 1WI1; (2) the definite statement that Mered had two wives, with whom he begat sons; and (3) an arrangement by which the sons are enumerated after the names of their respective mothers." After this transposition the 17th verse would read thus: " And the sons of Ezra are Jether, Mered,... and Jalon; and these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered took; and she conceived (and bare) Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah, the father of Eshtemoa (ver. 18), and his wife Jehudijah bore Jered the father of Gedor, etc." This conjecture commends itself by its simplicity, and by the clearness which it brings into the words. From them we then learn that two families, who dwelt in a number of the cities of Judah, were descended from Mered the son of Ezra by his two wives. We certainly know no more details concerning them, as neither Mered nor his children are met with elsewhere. From the circumstance, however, that the one wife was a daughter of Pharaoh, we may conclude that Mered lived before the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The name Miriam, which Moses' sister bore, is here a man's name. The names introduced by *2K are the names of towns. Ishbah is father (lord) of the town Eshtemoa, in the mountains of Judah, now Semua, a village to the south of Hebron, with considerable ruins dating from ancient times (cf. on Josh, xv. 50). HJfWPn means properly u the Jewess," as distinguished from the Egyptian woman, Pharaoh's daughter. Gedor is a town in the high lands of Judah (cf. on ver. 4). Socho, in the low land of Judah, now Shuweikeh, in Wady Sumt (cf. on Josh, xv. 35). Zanoah is the name of a town in the higli lands of Judah, Josh. xv. 56 (which has not yet been discovered), and of a town in the low land, now Zanua, not far from Zoreah, in an easterly direction (cf. on Josh. xv. 34). Perhaps the latter is here meant. In ver. 19, "the sons of the wife of Hodiah, the sister of Naham, are the father of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa the Maachathite." The stat. constr. flgta before njtffl shows that Hodiah is a man's name. Levites of this name are mentioned in Neh. viii. 7, ix. 5, x. 11. The relationship of Hodiah and Naham to the persons formerly named is not given. •"W'i? is a locality in the low land of Judah not yet discovered (see on Josh. xv. 44). The origin of the epithet WW we do not know. Before JJfoWK, "^K with 1 copul. is probably to be repeated; and the Maachathite, the chief of a part of the inhabitants of Eshtemoa, is perhaps a descendant of Caleb by Maachah (ii. 48). — Ver. 20. Of Shimon and his four sons, also> nothing is known. PT?"f? is one name. Ishi is often met with, e.g, ver. 42 and ii. 31, but nowhere in connection with Zoheth (not further noticed). The names of the sons are wanting after nnft"|3.
Vers. 21-23. Descendants of Shelah, the third son of Judah, ii. 3, and Gen.xxxviii. 5. — All the families of Judah enumerated in vers. 2-20 are connected together by the conjunction i, and so are grouped as descendants of the sons and grandsons of Judah named in ver. 1. The conjunction is omitted, however, before nfe "03, as also before nw *ia in ver. 3, to show that the descendants of Shelah form a second line of descendants of Judah, co-ordinate with the sons of Judah enumerated in vers. 1-19, concerning whom only a little obscure but not unimportant information has been preserved. Those mentioned as sons are Er (which also was the name of the first-born of Judah, ii. 3 f.), father of Lecah, and Laadan, the father of Mareshah. The latter name denotes, beyond question, a town which still exists as the ruin Marash in the Shephelah, Josh. xv. 44 (see on ii. 42), and consequently Lecah (n?r!) also is the name of a locality not elsewhere mentioned. The further descendants of Shelah were, u the families of the Byssus-work of the house of Ashbea," i.e. the families of Ashbea, a man of whom nothing further is known. Of these families some were connected with a famous weavinghouse or linen (Byssus) manufactory, probably in Egypt; and then further, in ver. 22, " Jokim, and the men of Chozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, which ruled over Moab, and Jashubi-lehem." Kimchi conjectured that HITS was the place called 2*0 in Gen. xxxviii. 5 = ^ptf, Josh. xv. 44, in the low land, where Shelah was born. Brv ■QtPJ is a strange name, "which the punctuators would hardly have pronounced in the way they have done if it had not come down to them by tradition" (Berth.). The other names denote heads of families or branches of families, the branches and families being included in them.1 Nothing is told us of them beyond what is found in our verses, according to which the four first named ruled over Moab during a period in the primeval time; for, as the historian himself remarks, " these things are old." — Ver. 23. " These are the potters and the inhabitants of Netaim and Gedera." It is doubtful whether nttn refers to all the descendants of Shelah, or only to those named in ver. 22. Bertheau holds the latter to be the more probable reference; u for as those named in ver. 21 have already been denominated Byssus-workers, it appears fitting that those in ver. 22 should be regarded as the potters, etc." But all
1 Jerome has given a curious translation of ver. 22, uet qui stare fecit solem, virique mendacii et securus et incendens, qui principes faerunt in Moab el qui reversisunt in Lahem: lixc autem verba vetera" — according to the Jewish Midrash, in which DKiDP vV3 "I^K was connected with the narrative in the book of
Ruth. For D^pV, qui stare fecit solem, is supposed to be Elimelech, and the viri mendacii Mahlon and Chilion, so well known from the book of Ruth, who went with their father into the land of Moab and married Moabitesscs.
those mentioned in ver. 22 are by no means called Byssusweavers, but only the families of Ashbea. What the descendants of Er and Laadan were is not said. The Hftri may consequently very probably refer to all the sons of Slielah enumerated in vers. 21 and 22, with the exception of the families designated Byssus-weavers, who are, of course, understood to be excepted. &V®) signifies " plantings; " but since fTVia is probably the name of a city Gedera in the lowlands of Judah (cf. Josh. xv. 36; and for the situation, see on 1 Chron. xii. 4), Netaim also will most likely denote a village where there were royal plantations, and about which these descendants of Shelah were employed, as the words " with the king in his business to dwell there " expressly state, tjfen is not an individual king of Judah, for we know not merely " of King Uzziah that he had country lands, 2 Chron. xxvi. 10" (Berth.); but we learn from 1 Chron. xxvii. 25-31 that David also possessed great estates and country lands, which were managed by regularly appointed officers. We may therefore with certainty assume that all the kings of Judah had domains on which not only agriculture and the rearing of cattle, but also trades, were carried on.1
1 From the arrangement of the names in vers. 2-20, in which Bertheau finds just twelve families grouped together, he concludes, S. 44 f., that the division of the tribe of Judah into these twelve families did actually exist at some time or other, and had been established by a new reckoning of the families which the heads of the community found themselves compelled to make after deep and wide alterations had taken place in the circumstances of the tribe. He then attempts to determine this time more accurately by the character of the names. For since only a very few names in these verses are known to us from the historical books, from Genesis to 2d Kings, and the few thus known refer to the original divisions of the tribe, which may have maintained themselves till post-exilic times, while, on the contrary, a great number of the other names recur in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah; and since localities which in the earliest period after the exile were important for the new community are frequently met with in our verses, while such as were constantly being mentioned in prse-exilic times are nowhere to be found, — Bertheau supposes that a division of the tribe of Judah is here spoken of, which actually existed at some time in the period between Zerubbabel and Ezra. This hypothesis has, however, no solid foundation. The assumption even that the names in vers. 2-20 belong to just twelve families is very questionable; for this number can only be arrived at by separating the descendants of Caleb, ver. 15, from the descendants of Kenaz, vers. 13 and 14, of whom Caleb himself was one, and reckoning them separately. But the circumstance that in this reckoning only the names in vers. 12-20 are taken into consideration, while no notice is taken of the descendants of Shelah the son of Judah,
In 25-27 we have, traced down through several generations, the genealogy of only one of all the families of the tribe of Simeon. There follows thereupon, in vers. 28-33, an enumeration of the ancient dwelling-places of this tribe; and finally, in vers. 34-43, information is given concerning the emigrations of Simeonite families into other neighbourhoods.
Vers. 24-27. The families of Simeon. — Of the six sons of Simeon, Gen. xlvi. 10 and Ex. vi. 15, only the five are here named who, according to Num. xxvi. 12-14, founded the families of this tribe. The third son, Ohad, is omitted even in Num. xxvi. 12 in the list of the families of Simeon, at the numbering of the people in the fortieth year of the journey through the wilderness, clearly only because the posterity of Ohad had either died out, or had so dwindled away that it could form no inde- enumerated in vers. 21-23, is much more important. Bcrtheau considers this verse to be merely a supplementary addition, but without reason, as we have pointed out on ver. 21. For if the descendants of Shelah form a second line of families descended from Judah, co-ordinate with the descendants of Pharez and Zerah, the tribe of Judah could not, either before or after the exile, have been divided into the twelve families supposed by Bcrtheau; for we have no reason to suppose, on behalf of this hypothesis, that all the descendants of Shelah had died out towards the end of the exile, and that from the time of Zerubbabel only families descended from Pharez and Zerah existed. But besides this, the hypothesis is decisively excluded by the fact that in the enumeration, vers. 2-20, no trace can be discovered of a division of the tribe of Judah into twelve families; for not only are the families mentioned not ranged according to the order of the sons and grandsons of Judah mentioned in ver. 1, but also the connection of many families with Judah is not even hinted at. An enumeration of families which rested upon a division either made or already existing at any particular time, would be very differently planned and ordered. But if we must hold the supposition of a division of the tribe of Judah into twelve families to be unsubstantiated, since it appears irreconcilable with the present state of these genealogies, we must also believe the opinion that this division actually existed at any time between Zerubbabel and Ezra to be erroneous, and to rest upon no tenable grounds. The relation of the names met with in these verses to the names in the books from Genesis to 2d Kings on the one hand, and to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah on the other, is not really that which Bertheau represents it to be. If we turn our attention in the first place to the names of places, we find that, except a few quite unknown villages or towns, the localities mentioned in vers. 2-'_;0 occur also in the book of Joshua, and many of them even here and there throughout Genesis, in the book of Judges, and in the books of Samuel and Kings. In pendent family. The names of the five sons agree with the names in Num. xxvi. 12 -14, except in the case of Jarib, who in Num. xxvi. 12, which coincides here with Gen. xlvi. 10 and Ex. vi. 15, is called Jachin; 3*TJ, consequently, must be looked upon as a transcriber's error for ]^\ Nemuel and Zerah (rnt, the rising of the sun) are called in Genesis and Exodus Jemuel (a different form of the same name) and Zohar ("^j i.e. candor), another name of similar meaning, which, at first used only as a by-name, afterwards supplanted the original name. — Ver. 25. " Shallum (was) his son;" without doubt the son of the last named Shaul, who in Genesis and Exodus is called the son of a Canaanitish woman, and is thereby distinguished from the other sons. His family is traced down, in vers. 25 and 26, through six generations to one Shimei. But this list is divided into two groups by the words " and the sons of Mishma," inserted at the beginning of ver. 26, but the reasons for the division are unknown. The plural, sons of Mishma, refers to Hammuel and his these latter they are somewhat more rarely met with, but only because they played no great part in history. The fact of a disproportionate number of these towns occurring also in the books of Ezra and Jtfehemiah is connected with the peculiar character of the contents of these books, containing as they do a number of registers of the families of Judah which had returned out of exile. Then if we consider the names of persons in vers. 2-20, we find that not a few of them occur in the historical narratives of the books of Samuel and Kings. Others certainly are found only in the family registers of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, while others again are peculiar to our verses. This phenomenon also is completely accounted for by the contents of the various historical books of the Old Testament. For example, had Nehemiah not received into his book the registers of all the families who had returned from Babylon, and who took part in the building of the walls of Jerusalem, no more names would be met with in his book than are found in the books of Samuel and Kings. Bertheau attempts to find support for his hypothesis in the way in which the names are enumerated, and their loose connection with each other, inasmuch as the disconnected statements abruptly and intermittently following one another, which to us bring enigma after enigma, must have been intended for readers who could bring a key to the understanding of the whole from an accurate knowledge of the relations which are here only hinted at; but the strength of this argument depends upon the assumption that complete family registers were at the command of the author of the Chronicle, from which he excerpted unconnected and obscure fragments, without any regard to order. But such an assumption cannot be justified. The character of that which is communicated would rather lead us to believe that only fragments were in the hands of the chronicler, which he has given to us as he found them. "We must therefore pronounce this attempt at an explanation of the contents and form of vers. 2-20 to be an utter failure.
descendants Zacchur and Shimei. Perhaps these two together form, with the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons mentioned in ver. 25, a single larger family. — Ver. 27. Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters, by whom he became the father of a numerous race. " His brothers," i.e. the other Simeonites, on the contrary, had not many sons. Hence it happens that they made not their whole race, i.e. the whole race of the Simeonites, numerous unto the sons of Judah, i.e. that the Simeonites were not so numerous as the descendants of Judah. This account is corroborated by the statement made at the numberings of the people under Moses; see on Num. i.-iv. (i. 2, S. 192).
Vers. 28-33. The ancient dwelling-places of the Simeonites, which they received within the tribal domain of Judah at the division of the land by Joshua; cf. Josh. xix. 1 ff. — There are in all eighteen cities, divided into two groups, numbering thirteen and five respectively, as in Josh. xix. 2-6, where these same cities are enumerated in the same order. The only difference is, that in Joshua thirteen cities are reckoned in the first group and four in the second, although the first group contains fourteen names. Between Beersheba and Moladah there stands there a V2$ which is not found in our list, and which might be considered to be a repetition of the second part of JQBJ-lKia, if it were not that in the list of the cities, Josh. xv. 26, the name VVW before Moladah corresponds to it. The other differences between the two passages arise partly from different forms of the same name being used, — as, for example, nnpii for njzi (Josh.), "Wl for "v^?^, TWrm for Ttfia; and partly from different names being used of the same city,— e.g. WWWa (ver. 31) instead of rfKa^TTa, " the house of lions" (Josh.), Dn^ instead of |nw (Josh.). All these cities lie in the south land of Judah, and have therefore been named in Josh. xv. 26-32 among the cities of that district. As to Beersheba, now Bir es Seba, see on Gen. xxi. 31; and for Moladah, which is to be identified with the ruin el Milh to the south of Hebron, on the road to Ailah, see on Josh. xv. 26. Bilhah (in Josh. xv. 29, rfatt), Ezem, Tolad, and Bethuel (for which in Josh. xv. 31?*p3 is found), have not yet been discovered; cf. on Josh. xv. 29 and 30. Hormah, formerly Sephat, is now the ruin Sepata, on the western slope of the Rakhma table-land, 2\ hours south of Khalasa (Elusa); cf. on Josh. xii. 14. Ziklag is most probably to be sought in the ancient village Aschludsch or Kasludsch, to the east of Sepata; cf. on Josh. xv. 31. Beth-Mar- caboth, i.e. a carriage-house," and Hazar-Susim (or Susa), i.e. horse-village, both evidently by-names, are called in Josh. xv. 31 Maclmannah and Sansannah. Their position has not yet been discovered. Beth-Birei, or Beth-Leboath, is also as yet undiscovered; cf. on Josh. xv. 32. Shaaraim, called in Josh. xv. 32 Shilhim, is supposed to be the same as Tell Sheriah, between Gaza and Beersheba; cf. Van de Velde, Reise, ii. S. 154. The enumeration of these thirteen cities concludes in ver. 31 with the strange subscription, " These (were) their cities until the reign of David, and their villages." Dnnvm which, according to the Masoretic division of the verses, stands at the beginning of ver. 32, should certainly be taken with ver. 31; for the places mentioned in ver. 32 are expressly called cities, and in Josh. xix. 6, cities and their villages, DiT"^^ are spoken of. This subscription can hardly a only be intended to remind us, that of the firstmentioned cities, one (viz. Ziklag, 1 Sam. xxvii. 6), or several, in the time of David, no longer belonged to the tribe of Simeon;" nor can it only be meant to state that " till the time of David the cities named were in possession of the tribe of Simeon, though they did not all continue to be possessed by this tribe at a later time" (Berth.). Ziklag had been, even before the reign of David, taken away from the Simeonites by the Philistines, and had become the property of King Achish, who in the reign of Saul presented it to David, and through him it became the property of the kings of Judah (1 Sam. xxvii. 6). The subscription can only mean that till the reign of David these cities rightfully belonged to the Simeonites, but that during and after David's reign this rightful possession of the Simeonites was trenched upon; and of this curtailing of their rights, the transfer of the city of Ziklag to the kings of Judah gives one historically attested proof. This, however, might not have been the only instance of the sort; it may have brought with it other alterations in the possessions of the Simeonites as to which we have no information. The remark of R. Salomo and Kimchi, that the men of Judah, when they had attained to greater power under David's rule, drove the Simeonites out of their domains, and compelled them to seek out other dwelling-places, is easily seen to be an inference drawn from the notices in vers. 33-43 of emigrations of the Simeonites into other districts; but it may not be quite incorrect, as these emigrations under Hezekiah presuppose a pressure upon or diminution of their territory. We would indeed expect this remark to occur after ver. 33, but it may have been placed between the first and second groups of cities, for the reason that the alterations in the dwelling-places of the Simeonites which took place in the time of David affected merely the first group, while the cities named in ver. 32 f., with their villages, remained at a later time even the untouched possession of the Simeonites. — Ver. 32. Instead of the five cities, Etam, Ain, liimmon, Tochen, and Ashan, only four are mentioned in Josh. xix. 7, viz. Ain, Rimmon, Ether, and Ashan; "TO is written instead of |3iH, and D^y is wanting. According to Movers, p. 73, and Berth, in his commentary on the passage, the list of these cities must have been at first as follows: jto"] p}f (one city), iny, |3to, and }fV; in Joshua |2in must have fallen out by mistake, in our text "TO has been erroneously exchanged for the better known city E£sy in the tribe of Judah, while by reckoning both pjf and v®~) the number four has become five. These conjectures are shown to be groundless by the order of t'he names in our text. For had "TO been exchanged for E W> ^D^y would not stand in the first place, at the head of the four or five cities, but would have occupied the place of "TO, which is connected with ]^V in Josh, xix. 7 and xv. 43. Then again, the fact that in Josh. xv. 32 }iS"j is separated from \)V by the 1 cop., and in Josh. xix. 7 is reckoned by itself as one city as in our verse, is decisive against taking PP and }i3"| together as one name. The want of the conjunction, moreover, between the two names here and in Josh. xix. 7, and the uniting of the two words into one name, flBTTIk Neh. xi. 29, is explained by the supposition that the towns lay in the immediate neighbourhood of each other, so that they were at a later time united, or at least might be regarded as one city, llimmon is perhaps the same as the ruin Ixum er llummanim, four hours to the north of Beersheba; and Ain is probably to be identified with a large half-ruined and very ancient well which lies at from thirty to thirty-five minutes distance. cf. on Josh. xv. 32. Finally, the assertion that the name EL^y has come into our text by an exchange of the unknown "TO for the name of this better known city of Judah, is founded upon a double geographical error. It rests (1) upon the erroneous assumption that besides the Etam in the high lands of Judah to the south of Bethlehem, there was no other city of this name, and that the Etam mentioned in Judg. xv. 8, 11 is identical with that in the high lands of Judah; and (2) on the mistaken idea that Ether was also situated in the high lands of Judah, whereas it was, according to Josh. xv. 42, one of the cities of the Shephelah; and the Simeonites, moreover, had no cities in the high lands of Judah, but had their dwelling-places assigned to them in the Negeb and the Shephelah. The existence of a second Etam, besides that in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem^ is placed beyond doubt by Judg. xv. 8 and 11; for mention is there made of an Etam in the plain of Judah, which is to be sought in the neighbourhood of Khuweilife, on the border of the Negeb and the mountainous district: cf. on Judg. xv. 8. It is this Etam which is spoken of in our verse, and it is rightly grouped with Ain and Eimmon, which were situated in the Negeb, while Tochen and Ashan were in the Shephelah. The statement of Josh. xix. 7 and xv. 42 leaves no doubt as to the fact that the }3in of our verse is only another name for "iriy. Etam must therefore have come into the possession of the Simeonites after Joshua's time, but as to when, or under what circumstances, we have no information. — Ver. 33. Concerning the villages belonging to these cities, cf. on Josh. xix. 8, where for sV3, we have the more accurate "IN? TVV2, and Ramah of the south. The position of these places has not yet been certainly ascertained. " These are their dwelling-places, and their family register was to them;" i.e. although they were only a small tribe and dwelt in the midst of Judah, they yet had their own family register (Berth.), BWriPi infin. is used substantively, " the entering in the family register." Vers. 34-43. Emigrations of Simeonite families into other districts.— Vers. 34-41 record an expedition of the Simeonites, in the time of Hezekiah, undertaken for purposes of conquest. In vers. 34-36, thirteen princes of the tribe of Simeon are enumerated who undertook this expedition. The families of some of them are traced through several generations, but in no case are they traced down so far as to show their connection with the families named in vers. 24-26. — Ver. 38. u These mentioned by their names were princes in their families; whose fathers'-houses had increased to a multitude. And they went," etc. riiE^'n CNsn, properly u those who have come with their names," i.e. those who have been mentioned by name; for Nia with 2 = to come with, is to bring something in, to introduce: cf. Ps. Ixxi. 16. This formula is synonymous with rri£$2 D'aVian, ver. 41; but we cannot consider it, as J. H. Mich., Berth., and others do, identical in meaninng with nton ttj» YC'K, xii. 31, Num. i. 17, etc. The predicate to HJN is DW&3, and Wjffin is a relative sentence, more accurately defining the subject HPK. Princes in their families are not heads of families, but heads of fathers'-houses, into which the families had divided themselves. rriStTJVa is not construed with the plural, as being collective (Berth.), but as the plural of the word 3NTJV3: cf. Ew. § 270, c. — Ver. 39. The princes named "went westward from Gedor to the east side of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks." *V"U Kino does not mean the entrance of Gedor (Mich., Berth., and others); but is, as the corresponding n")!P? " rising " of the sun, i.e. east, requires, a designation of the west, and is abridged from #B$n N^p, as in statements with reference to places rntO is used instead of BWn rn?p. The locality itself, however, is to us at present unknown. So much is clear, that by Gedor, the Gedor mentioned in Josh. xv. 58, situated in the high lands of Judah, north of Hebron, cannot be intended, for in that district there is no open valley stretching out on either hand; and the Simeonites, moreover, could not have carried on a war of conquest in the territory of the tribe of Judah in the reign of Kezekiah. But where this Gedor is to be sought cannot be more accurately determined; for KJ*n is certainly not " the valley in which the Dead Sea lies, and the southern continuation of that valley," as Ewald and Berth, think: that valley has, in the Old Testament, always the name fi?"W« From the use of the article, " the valley," no further conclusion can be drawn, than that a definite valley in the neighbourhood of Gedor is meant.1 Even the further statements, in ver. 30, with regard to the district, that they found there fat and good pasture, and that the land extended on both sides (i.e. was wide), and at rest and secure, because formerly the Hamites dwelt there, and the statement of ver. 41, that the Simeonites found the Meunim there, and smote them, give us no firm foothold for the ascertainment of the district referred to. The whole Negeb of Judah has been as yet too little travelled over and explored by modern travellers, to allow conclude that VJ is a transcriber's error for V)J. But a slip of the pen which would make the Gcrar so famed in the history of the patriarchs into Gedor is a priori not very probable; and the defective writing "na, while Gedor in the high lands is written "ina, cannot be adduced, as Bertheau thinks, in support of the hypothesis, since Gedor even in ver. 18 is written defectively. It is decisive against Gerar, that the dwelling-places of the Simeonites demonstrably did not extend till towards sunset (westward) from Gerar, for the cities assigned to them all lie to the east of Gerar.
of our forming any probable conjecture as to Gedor and the wide valley stretching out on both sides. The description of the Hamite inhabitants, tVOVh nt3pb>, reminds us of the inhabitants of the ancient Laish (Judg. xviii. 7, 27). Those En fp are people from Ham, i.e. Hamites, and they may have been Egyptians, Cushites, or even Canaanites (chap. i. 8). This only is certain, that they were a peaceful shepherd people, who dwelt in tents, and were therefore nomads. c^?r7 " formerly," before the Simeonites took possession of the land. — Ver. 41. The above-mentioned Simeonite princes, with their people, fell upon the peaceful little people of the Hamites in the days of Hezekiah, and smote, i.e. destroyed, their tents, and also the Meunites whom they found there. The Meunites wTere strangers in this place, and were probably connected with the city Maan in the neighbourhood of Petra, to the east of Wady Musa (cf. on 2 Chron. xx. 1 and xxvi. 7), who dwelt in tents as nomads, with the Hamites in their richly pastured valley. Epv!t!?5? and they destroyed them utterly, as the Vulgate rightly renders it, et deleverunt; and J. H. Mich., ad internecionem itsque cos exciderunt. The word ^"]HH? to smite with the curse, having gradually lost its original religious signification, came to be used in a wider sense, to denote complete extirpation, because all accursed persons were slain. Undoubted examples are 2 Chron. xx. 23, xxxii. 14, 2 Kings xix. 11, Isa. xxxvii. 11; and it is to be so understood here also.1 " Until this day," i.e. till the composition of the historical work used by the author of the Chronicle, i.e. till the time before the exile. — Vers. 42 and 43. A part of the Simeonites undertook a second war of conquest against Mount Seir. Led by four, chiefs of the sons of Shimei (cf. ver. 27), 500 men marched thither, smote the remainder of the Amalekites who had escaped, and they dwell there to this day (as in ver. 41). D^p is more accurately defined by
1 Eertheau ignores this secondary use of the word, and has drawn from DD'HiT' the extremely wide inference, that the Simeonites, impelled by holy enthusiasm, arising from the wondrous deliverance of Judali from the attack of the Assyrian power, and the elevation of feeling which it produced in the community, and filled with the thought awakened by the discourses of the great prophets, that the time had come to extend Israel's rule, and to bring the conquered peoples under the curse, just as was done in the time of Joshua, had undertaken this war of annexation. But there is unfortunately not a single trace of this enthusiastic thought in the narrative of our verse, for it knows no other motive for the whole undertaking than the purely earthly need to seek and find new pasture lands.
'& "Oap, and is therefore to be referred to the Simeonites in general, and not to that part of them only mentioned in ver. 33 (Berth.). From the circumstance that the leaders were sons of Shimei, we may conclude that the whole troop belonged to this family. The escaped of Amalek are those who had escaped destruction in the victories of Saul and David over this hereditary enemy of Israel (1 Sam. xiv. 48, xv. 7; 2 Sam. viii. 12). A remnant of them had been driven into the mountain land of Idumea, where they were smitten, i.e. extirpated, by the Simeonites. It is not said at what time this was done, but it occurred most probably in the second half of Hezekiah's reign.
CHAP. V. 1-26. — THE FAMILIES OF REUBEN, GAD, AND THE HALF TRIBE OF MANASSEH BEYOND JORDAN.
Vers. 1-10. The families of the tribe of Reuben. — Vers. 1, 2. Reuben is called the first-born of Israel, because he was the first-born of Jacob, although, owing to his having defiled his father's bed (Gen. xlix. 4), his birthright, i.e. its privileges, were transferred to the sons of Joseph, who were not, however, entered in the family register of the house of Israel according to the birthright, i.e. as first-born sons. The inf. frirnn with? expresses " shall" or "must," cf. Ew. § 237, e, "he was not to register," i.e. " he was not to be registered." The subject is Joseph, as the Rabbins, e.g. Kimchi, have perceived. The clauses after WH ^3 form a parenthesis, containing the reason of Reuben's being called?*W? "N^?, which is still further established by its being shown (in ver. 2) how it happened that Joseph, although the birthright was given to him, according to the disposition made by the patriarch (Gen. xlviii. 5 ff.), yet was not entered in the family registers as first-born. The reason of this was, " for Judah was strong among his brethren, and (one) from him became the Prince; " scil. on the strength of the patriarchal blessing (Gen. xlix. 8-12), and by means of the historic fulfilment of this blessing. The "prevailing" of Judah among his brethren showed itself even under Moses at the numbering of the people, when the tribe of Judah considerably outnumbered all the other tribes (cf. t. i. 2, S. 192). Then, again, it appeared after the division of the land of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, Judah being called by a declaration of the divine will to be the vanguard of the army in the war against the Canaanites
(Judg. i. 1 f.); and it was finally made manifest by the TJ3 over Israel being chosen by God from the tribe of Judah, in the person of David (cf. xxviii. 4 with 1 Sam. xiii. 14, xxv. 30). From this we gather that the short, and from its brevity obscure, sentence ^DD TOT bears the signification we have given it. " But the birthright was Joseph's; " i.e. the rights of the progenitor were transferred to or remained with him, for two tribal domains were assigned to his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh, according to the law of the first-born (Deut. xxi. 15-17).
After this parenthetic explanation, the words " the sons of Reuben, the first-born of Israel," ver. 1, are again taken up in ver. 3, and the sons are enumerated. The names of the four sons correspond to those given in Gen. xlvi. 9, Ex. vi. 14, and Num. xxvi. 5-7. — Vers. 4-6. From one of these sons descended Joel, whose family is traced down through seven generations, to the time of the Assyrian deportation of the Israelites. But we are neither informed here, nor can we ascertain from any information elsewhere given in the Old Testament, from which of the four sons Joel was descended. For although many of the names in vers. 4-6 frequently occur, yet they are nowhere met with in connection with the family whose members are here registered. The last-named, Beerah, was *?jj*n? Kh5W, a prince of the Reubenites, not a prince of the tribe of Reuben, but a prince of a family of the Reubenites. This is expressed by? being used instead of the stat. constr.; cf. Ew. § 292, a. In reference to the leading away of the trans-Jordanic tribes into captivity by Tiglath-pilneser, cf. on 2 Kings xv. 29. The name of this king as it appears in the Chronicles is always Tiglath-pilneser, and in the book of Kings Tiglath-pileser, but its meaning has not yet been certainly ascertained. According to Oppert's interpretation, it = nn^xp^np^n, i.e. " worship of the son of the Zodiac" (i.e. the Assyrian Hercules); vid. Delitzsch on Isaiah, Introd. — Vers. 7-9. a And his brothers, (each) according to his families in the registration, according to their descent (properly their generations; vide for nVipifi on Gen. ii. 4), are (were) the head (the first) Jeiel and Zechariah, and Bela,... the son of Joel," probably the Joel already mentioned in ver. 4. " His (i.e. Beerah's) brothers" are the families related to the family of Beerah, which were descended from the brothers of Joel. That they were not, however, properly "brothers," is clear from the fact that Bela's descent is traced back to Joel as the third of the preceding members of his family; and the conclusion would be the same, even if this Joel be another than the one mentioned in ver. 4. The singular suffix with YTpQW? is to be taken distributively, or B^K may be supplied before it in thought; cf. Num. ii. 34, xi. 10. The word Btth, u head," for the first-born, stands here before the name, as in xii. 3, xxiii. 8; elsewhere it stands after the name, e.g. ver. 12 and ix. 17. The dwelling-places of Bela and his family are then given in vers. 8b and 9. " He dwelt in Aroer," on the banks of the brook Arnon (Josh. xiii. 9, xii. 2), now the ruin Araayr on the northern bank of the Mojeb (vide on Num. xxxii. 34). " Until Nebo and Baal-meon" westward. Nebo, a village on the hill of the same name in the mountains of Abarim, opposite Jericho (cf. on Num. xxxii. 38). Baal-meon is probably identical with the ruin Myun, three-quarters of an hour southeast from Heshbon. — Ver. 9. " Eastward to the coming to the desert (i.e. till towards the desert) from the river Euphrates," i.e. to the great Arabico-Syrian desert, which stretches from the Euphrates to the eastern frontier of Perea, or from Gilead to the Euphrates. Bela's family had spread themselves so far abroad, " for their herds were numerous in the land of Gilead," i.e. Perea, the whole trans-Jordanic domain of the Israelites. — Ver. 10. " In the days of Saul they made war upon the Hagarites, and they fell into their hands, and they dwelt in their tents over the whole east side of Gilead." The subject is not determined, so that the words may be referred either to the whole tribe of Reuben or to the family of Bela (ver. 8). The circumstance that in vers. 8 and 9 Bela is spoken of in the singular (2^ fcttn and 2^), while here the plural is used in reference to the war, is not sufficient to show that the words do not refer to Bela's family, for the narrative has already fallen into the plural in the last clause of ver. 9. We therefore think it better to refer ver. 10 to the family of Bela, seeing that the wide spread of this family, which is mentioned in ver. 9, as far as the desert to the east of the inhabited land, presupposes the driving out of the Hagarites dwelling on the eastern plain of Gilead. The notice of this war, moreover, is clearly inserted here for the purpose of explaining the wide spread of the Belaites even to the Euphrates desert, and there is nothing which can be adduced against that reference. The vnK in ver. 7 does not, as Bertheau thinks probable, denote that Bela was a contemporary of Beerah, even if the circumstance that from Bela to Joel only three generations are enumerated, could be reconciled with this supposition. The spread of Bela's family over the whole of the Reubenite Gilead, which has just been narrated, proves decisively that they were not contemporaries. If Bela lived at the time of the invasion of Gilead by Tiglath-pileser, when the prince Beerah was carried away into exile, it is certainly possible that he might have escaped the Assyrians; but he could neither have had at that time a family " which inhabited all the east land," nor could he himself have extended his domain from " Aroer and Nebo towards the wilderness," as the words SSJfy &fin? ver. 8, distinctly state. We therefore hold that Bela was much older than Beerah, for he is introduced as a great-grandson of Joel, so that his family might have been as widely distributed as vers. 8, 9 state, and have undertaken and carried out the war of conquest against the Hagarites, referred to in ver. 10, as early as the time of Saul. Thus, too, we can most easily explain the fact that Bela and his brothers Jeiel and Zechariah are not mentioned. As to DWW, cf. on ver. 19.
Vers. 11-17. The families of the tribe of Gad, and their dwellingplaces. — Ver. 11. In connection with the preceding statement as to the dwelling-places of the Reubenites, the enumeration of the families of Gad begins with a statement as to their dwellingplaces: " Over against them (the Reubenites) dwelt the Gadites in Bashan unto Salcah." Bashan is used here in its wider si^nification of the dominion of King On, which embraced the northern half of Gilead, i.e. the part of that district which lay on the north side of the Jabbok, and the whole district of Bashan; cf. on Deut. iii. 10. Salcah formed the boundary towrards the east, and is now Szalchad, about six hours eastward from Bosra (see on Deut. iii. 10). — Ver. 12. The sons of Gad (Gen. xlvi. 16) are not named here, because the enumeration of the families of Gad had been already introduced by ver. 11, and the genealogical connection of the families enumerated in ver. 12 if., with the sons of the tribal ancestor, had not been handed down. In ver. 12 four names are mentioned, which are clearly those of heads of families or fathers'-houses, with the addition u in Bashan," i.e. dwelling, for CBJJ is to be repeated or supplied from the preceding verse. — In ver. 13 seven other names occur, the bearers of which are introduced as brothers of those mentioned (ver. 12), according to their fathers'-houses. They are therefore heads of fathers'- houses, but the district in which they dwelt is not given; whence
Bertheau concludes, but wrongly, that the place where they dwelt is not given in the text. The statement which is here omitted follows in ver. 16 at a fitting place; for in vers. 14 and 15 their genealogy, which rightly goes before the mention of their dwelling-place, is given. n?x? ver. 14, is not to be referred, as Bertheau thinks, to the four Gadites mentioned in vers. 12 and 13, but only to those mentioned in ver. 13. Nothing more was known of those four (ver. 12) but that they dwelt in Bashan, while the genealogy of the seven is traced up through eight generations to a certain Buz, of whom nothing further is known, as the name R3 occurs nowhere else, except in Gen. xxii. 21 as that of a son of Nahor. The names of his ancestors also are not found elsewhere among the Gadites. — Ver. 15. The head of their fathers'-houses (i.e. of those mentioned in ver. 13) was Ahi the son of Abdiel, the son of Guni, who is conjectured to have lived in the time of King Jotham of Judah, or of Jeroboam n. of Israel, when, according to ver. 17, genealogical registers of the Gadites were made up. — Ver. 16. The families descended from Buz "dwelt in Gilead," in the part of that district lying to the south of the Jabbok, which Moses had given to the Gadites and Reubenites (Deut. iii. 12); "in Bashan and her daughters," that is, in the villages belonging to the cities of Bashan and Gilead inhabited by them (for the suffix in ^ntoa is to be referred distributively to both districts, or the cities in them). u And in all the pasture grounds (^"?P, cf. on Num. xxxv. 2) of Sharon unto their outgoings." fHW, Sharon, lay not in Perea, but is a great plain on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from Carmel to near Joppa, famed for its great fertility and its rich growth of flowers (Song ii. 1; Isa. xxxiii. 9, xxxv. 2, lxv. 10). " A Ccesarea Palasstince usque ad oppidwn Joppe omnis terra, qua? cernitur,dicitur Saronas." Jerome in Onom.; cf. v. Raumer, Pal. S. 50, and Robins. Phys. Geog. S. 123. It is this plain which is here meant, and the supposition of the older commentators that there was a second Sharon in the east- Jordan land is without foundation, as Reland, Palestina illustr. p. 370 sq., has correctly remarked. For it is not said that the Gadites possessed cities in Sharon, but only pastures of Sharon are spoken of, which the Gadites may have sought out for their herds even on the coast of the Mediterranean; more especially as the domain of the cis-Jordanic half-tribe of Manasseh stretched into the plain of Sharon, and it is probable that at all times there was intercourse between the cis- and trans- Jordanic Manassites, in which the Gadites may also have taken part. Drrifcttpn are the outgoings of the pastures to the sea, cf. Josh. xvii. 9. — Ver. 17. " All these (BJ3, all the families of Gad, not merely those mentioned in ver. 13 ff.) were registered in the days of Jotham king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam king of Israel." These two kings did not reign contemporaneously, for Jotham ascended the throne in Judah twenty-five years after the death of Jeroboam of Israel. Here, therefore, two different registrations must be referred to, and that carried on under Jotham is mentioned first, because Judah had the legitimate kingship. That set on foot by Jeroboam was probably undertaken after that king had restored all the ancient boundaries of the kingdom of Israel, 2 Kings xiv. 25 fY. King Jotham of Judah could prepare a register of the Gadites only if a part of the trans- Jordanic tribes had come temporarily under his dominion. As to any such event, indeed, we have no accurate information, but the thing in itself is not unlikely. For as the death of Jeroboam II. was followed by complete anarchy in the kingdom of the ten tribes, and one ruler overthrew the other, until at last Pekah succeeded in holding the crown for ten years, while in Judah until Pekah ascended the throne of Israel Uzziah reigned, and raised his kingdom to greater power and prosperity, the southern part of the trans-Jordanic land might very well have come for a time under the sway of Judah. At such a time Jotham may have carried out an assessment and registration of the Gadites, until his contemporary Pekah succeeded, with the help of the Syrian king Rezin, in taking from the king of Judah the dominion over Gilead, and in humbling the kingdom of Judah in the reign of Ahaz.
Vers. 18-22. War of the trans-Jordanic tribes of Israel ivith Arabic tribes. — As the half-tribe of Manasseh also took part in this war, we should have expected the account of it after ver. 24. Bertheau regards its position here as a result of striving after a symmetrical distribution of the historical information. u In the case of Reuben," he says, " the historical information is in ver. 10; in the case of the half-tribe of Manasseh, in vers. 25 and 26; as to Gad, we have our record in vers. 18-22, which, together with the account in vers. 25 and 26, refers to all the trans-Jordanic Israelites." But it is much more likely that the reason of it will be found in the character of the authorities which the author of the Chronicle made use of, in which, probably, the notes regarding this war were contained in the genealogical register of the Gadites. — Ver. 18.?*n *ja'|0 belongs to the predicate of the sentence, " They were the sons of valour," i.e. they belonged to the valiant warriors, " men bearing shield and sword (weapons of offence and defence), and those treading (or bending) the bow," i.e. skilful bowmen. ^^7^ VS®?* people practised in war; cf. the portrayal of the warlike valour of Gad and Manasseh, chap. xii. 8, 21. " The number 44,760 must be founded upon an accurate reckoning" (Berth.); but in comparison with the number of men capable of bearing arms in those tribes in the time of Moses, it is somewhat inconsiderable: for at the first numbering under him Reuben alone had 46,500 and Gad 45,650, and at the second numbering Reuben had 43,730 and Gad 40,500 men; see on Num. i.-iv. (i. 2, S. 192). — Ver. 19. " They made war with the Hagarites and Jetur, Nephish and Nodab." So early as the time of Saul the Reubenites had victoriously made war upon the Hagarites (see ver. 10); but the war here mentioned was certainly at a later time, and has no further connection with that in ver. 10 except that both arose from similar causes. The time of the second is not given, and all we know from ver. 226 is that it had broken out before the trans-Jordanic Israelites were led captive by the Assyrians. DW"ian, in Ps. Ixxxiii. 7 contracted into D*!}?, are the 'Aypaiot,, whom Strabo, xvi. p. 767, introduces, on the authority of Eratosthenes, as leading a nomadic life in the great Arabico-Syrian desert, along with the Nabataeans and Chaulotasans. Jetur, from whom the Itureans are descended, and Nephish, are Ishmaelites; cf. on Gen. xxv. 15. Nodab, mentioned only here, is a Bedouin tribe of whom nothing more is known. — Ver. 20. The Israelites, with God's help, gained the victory. FITJP, "it was helped to them," i.e. by God "against them" — the Hagarites and their allies. DHttjr^ contracted from Dniay "»t?K. "liflJPJ is not an uncommon form of the perf. Niph., which would not be suitable in a continuous sentence, but the inf. absol. Niph. used instead of the third pers. perf. (cf. Gesen. Heb. Gramm. § 131, 4): " and (God) was entreated of them, because they trusted in Him." From these words we may conclude that the war was a very serious one, in which the possession of the land was at stake. As the trans-Jordanic tribes lived mainly by cattlebreeding, and the Arabian tribes on the eastern frontier of their land were also a shepherd people, quarrels could easily arise as to the possession of the pasture grounds, which might lead to a war of extermination. — Ver. 21. The conquerors captured a great booty in herds, 50,000 camels, 250,000 head of small cattle (sheep and goats), 2000 asses, and 100,000 persons — all round numbers; cf. the rich booty obtained in the war against the Midianites, Num. xxxi. 11, 32 ff. — Ver. 22. This rich booty should not surprise us, " for there fell many slain," i.e. the enemy had suffered a very bloody defeat. a For the war was from God," i.e. conducted to this result: cf. 2 Chron. xxv. 20; 1 Sam. xvii. 47. " And they dwelt in their stead," i.e. they took possession of the pasture grounds, which up to that time had belonged to the Arabs, and held them until they were carried away captive by the Assyrians; see ver. 26.
Vers. 23-26. The families of the half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, and the leading away of the East-Jordan Israelites into the Assyrian exile. — Ver. 23. The half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan was very numerous (32"} n®\f), H and they dwelt in the land of Bashan (i.e. the Bashan inhabited by Gad, ver. 12) (northwards) to Baal Hermon," — i.e., according to the more accurate designation of the place in Josh. xii. 7 and xiii. 5, in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon, probably the present Ban j as, at the foot of Hermon (see on Num. xxxiv. 8), — " and Senir and Mount Hermon." ">W, which according to Deut. iii. 9 was the name of Hermon or Antilibanus in use among the Amorites, is here and in Ezek. xxvii. 5 the name of a part of those mountains (vide on Deut. iii. 9), just as a Mount Hermon" is the name of another part of this range. — Ver. 24. Seven heads of fathers' - houses of the half-tribe of Manasseh are enumerated, and characterized as valiant heroes and famous men. The enumeration of the names begins strangely with 1 (1SJT!); perhaps a name has fallen out before it. Nothing has been handed down as to any of these names. — Vers. 25 and 26 form the conclusion of the register of the two and a half trans-Jordanic tribes. The sons of Manasseh are not the subject to wE*}, but the Reubenites and Manassites, as is clear from ver. 26. These fell away faithlessly from the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God had destroyed before them, i.e. the Amorites or Canaanites. u And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of the Assyrian kings Pul and Tiglath-pilneser, and he (this latter) led them away captives to Halah and Habor," etc. nrrnx "ijn7 Lavater has rightly rendered, " in mentem illis dedit, movit eosy ut expeditionemfacerent contra illos;" cf. 2 Chron. xxi. 16.
Pal is mentioned as being the first Assyrian king who attacked the land of Israel, cf. 2 Kings xv. 19 f. The deportation began, however, only with Tiglath-pileser, who led the East-Jordan tribes into exile, 2 Kings xv. 29. To him M*l sing, refers. The suffix is defined by the following ace., 'W ^XftM*y;? is, according to the later usage, nota ace.; cf. Ew. § 277, e. So also before the name npn? u to Halah," i.e. probably the district KdXayrjvT} (in Strabo) on the east side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh, on the frontier of Armenia (cf. on 2 Kings xvii. 6). In the second book of Kings (xv. 29) the district to which the two and a half tribes were sent as exiles is not accurately determined, being only called in general Asshur (Assyria). The names in our verse are there (2 Kings xvii. 6) the names of the districts to which Shalmaneser sent the remainder of the ten tribes after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. It is therefore questionable whether the author of the Chronicle took his account from an authority used by him, or if he names these districts only according to general recollection, in which the times of Shalmaneser and of Tiglath-pilneser are not very accurately distinguished (Berth.). We consider the first supposition the more probable, not merely because he inverts the order of the names, but mainly because he gives the name *on instead of " the cities of Media," as it is in Kings, and that name he could only have obtained from his authorities. "fan is not the river Chaboras in Mesopotamia, which falls into the Euphrates near Circesium, for that river is called in Ezekiel "U3, but is a district in northern Assyria, where Jakut mentions that there is both a mountain Xaj3copa<^ on the frontier of Assyria and Media (Ptolem. vi. 1), and a river Khabur Chasanise, which still bears the old name Khabur, rising in the neighbourhood of the upper Zab, near Amadijeh, and falling into the Tigris below Jezirah. This Khabur is the river of Gozan (vide on 2 Kings xvii. 6). The word N"jn appears to be the Aramaic form of the Hebrew "in, mountains, and the vernacular designation usual in the mouths of the people of the mountain land of Media, which is called also in Arabic el Jebftl (the mountains). This name can therefore only have been handed down from the exiles who dwelt there.
As to the tribe of Levi, we have several communications: (1.) the genealogy of the high-priestly family of Aaron, down to Jehozadak, who was led away into exile by Nebuchadnezzar (v. 27-41); (2.) a short register of the families of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, which does not extend far into later times (vi. 1-15); (3.) the genealogies of the musicians Heman, Asaph, and Ethan (vi. 16-32), with remarks on the service of the other Levites (vers. 33, 34); (4.) a register of the high priests from Eleazar to Ahimaaz the son of Zadok (vi. 35-38), with a register of the cities of the Levites (vi. 39-66). If we look into these genealogies and registers, we see, both from a repetition of a part of the genealogy of the high priest (vi. 35-38), and also from the name of the eldest son of Levi appearing in two different forms — in v. 27 ff. Gershon; in vi. 1, 2, 5, etc., Gershom — that the register in v. 27-41 is drawn from another source than the registers in chap, vi., which, with the exception of the genealogies of David's chief musicians, are throughout fragmentary, and in parts corrupt, and were most probably found by the author of the Chronicle in this defective state.
Chap. v. 27-41. The family of Aaron, or the high-priestly line of Aaron, to the time of the Babylonian exile. — Vers. 27-29. In order to exhibit the connection of Aharon (or Aaron) with the patriarch Levi, the enumeration begins with the three sons of Levi, who are given in ver. 27 as in Gen. xlvi. 11, Ex. vi. 16, and in other passages. Of Levi's grandchildren, only the four sons of Kohath (ver. 28) are noticed; and of these, again, Amram is the only one whose descendants — Aaron, Moses, and Miriam — are named (ver. 29); and thereafter only Aaron's sons are introduced, in order that the enumeration of his family in the highpriestly line of Eleazar might follow. With ver. 28 cf. Ex. i. 18, and on ver. 19 see the commentary on Ex. vi. 20. With the sons of Aaron (29&) compare besides Ex. vi. 23, also Num. iii. 2-4, and 1 Chron. xxiv. 1, 2. As Nadab and Abihu were slain when they offered strange fire before Jahve (Lev. x. 1 ff.), Aaron's race was continued only by his sons Eleazar and Ithamar. After Aaron's death, his eldest son Eleazar was chosen by God to be his successor in the high priest's office, and thus the line of Eleazar came into possession of the high-priestly dignity.
In vers. 30-41 the descendants of Eleazar are enumerated in twenty-two generations; the word *ran, " he begat/' being repeated with every name. The son so begotten was, when he lived after his father, the heir of the high-priestly dignity. Thus Phinehas the son of Eleazar (Ex. vi. 25) is found in possession of it in Jud^. xx. 28. From this the older commentators have rightly drawn tho inference that the purpose of the enumeration in vers. 30-40 was to communicate the succession of high priests from Eleazar, who died shortly after Joshua (Josh. xxiv. 33), to Jehozadak, whom Nebuchadnezzar caused to be carried away into Babylon. From the death of Aaron in the fortieth year after Israel came forth from Egypt, till the building of the temple in the fourth year of the reign of Solomon, 440 years elapsed (480 — 40 = 440, 1 Kings vi. 1). From the building of the temple to the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple by the Chaldoeans there was an interval of 423 years (36 years under Solomon, and 387 years during which the kingdom of Judah existed; see the chronological table to 1 Kings xii.). Between the death of Aaron, therefore, and the time when Jehozadak was led away into captivity, supposing that that event occurred only under Zedekiah, lay a period of 440 + 423 = 863 years. For this period twenty-two generations appear too few, for then the average duration of each life would be 39^- years. Such an estimate would certainly appear a very high one, but it does not pass the bounds of possibility, as cases may have occurred hi which the son died before the father, when consequently the grandson wrould succeed the grandfather in the office of high priest, and the son would be omitted in our register. The everrecurring "ran cannot be brought forward in opposition to this supposition, because "ran in the genealogical lists may express mediate procreation, and the grandson may be introduced as begotten by the grandfather. On the supposition of the existence of such cases, we should have to regard the average above mentioned as the average time during which each of the hi^h priests held the office. But against such an interpretation of this list of the posterity of Eleazar two somewhat serious difficulties are raised. The less serious of these consists in this, that in the view of the author of our register, the line of Eleazar remained in uninterrupted possession of the high-priestly dignity; but in the historical books of the Old Testament another line of high priests, beginning with Eli, is mentioned, which, according to 1 Chron. xxiv. 5, and Joseph. Antt. v. 11. 5, belonged to the family of Ithamar. The list is as follows: Eli (1 Sam. ii. 20); his son Phinehas, who, however, died before Eli (1 Sam. iv. 11); his son Ahitub (1 Sam. xiv. 3); his son Ahijah, who was also called Ahimelech (1 Sam. xiv. 3, xxii. 9, 11, 20); his son Abiathar (1 Sam. xxii. 20), from whom Solomon took away the high-priesthood (1 Kings ii. 26 f.), and set Zadok in his place (1 Kings ii. 35). According to Josephus, loc. cit., the highpriestly dignity remained with the line of Eleazar, from Eleazar to Ozi (My, ver. 31 f.); it then fell to Eli and his descendants, until with Zadok it returned to the line of Eleazar. These statements manifestly rest upon truthful historical tradition; for the supposition that at the death of Ozi the high-priesthood was transferred from the line of Eleazar to the line of Ithamar through Eli, is supported by the circumstance that from the beginning of the judgeship of Eli to the beginning of the reign of Solomon a period of 139 years elapsed, which is filled up in both lines by five names, — Eli, Phinehas, Ahitub, Ahijah, and Abiathar in the passages above quoted; and Zerahiah, Meraioth, Amariah, Ahitub, and Zadok in vers. 32-34 of our chapter. But the further opinion expressed by Joseph. Antt. viii. 1. 3, that the descendants of Eleazar, during the time in which Eli and his descendants were in possession of the priesthood, lived as private persons, plainly rests on a conjecture, the incorrectness of which is made manifest by some distinct statements of the Old Testament: for, according to 2 Sam. viii. 17 and xx. 25, Zadok of Eleazar's line, and Abiathar of the line of Ithamar, were high priests in the time of David; cf. 1 Chron. xxiv. 5 f. The transfer of the high-priestly dignity, or rather of the' official exercise of the high-priesthood, to Eli, one of Ithamar's line, after Ozi's death, was, as we have already remarked on 1 Sam. ii. 27 ff., probably brought about by circumstances or relations which are not now known to us, but without an extinction of the right of Ozi's descendants to the succession in the dignity. But when the wave of judgment broke over the house of Eli, the ark was taken by the Philistines; and after it had been sent back into the land of Israel, it was not again placed beside the tabernacle, but remained during seventy years in the house of Abinadab (1 Sam. iv. 4-vii. 2). Years afterwards David caused it to be brought to Jerusalem, and erected a separate tent for it on Zion, while the tabernacle had meanwhile been transferred to Gibeon, where it continued to be the place where sacrifices were offered till the building of the temple. Thus there arose two places of worship, and in connection with them separate spheres of action for the high priests of both lines, — Zadok performing the duties of the priestly office at Gibeon (1 Chron. xvi. 39; cf. 1 Kings iii. 4 ff.), while Abiathar discharged its functions in Jerusalem. But without doubt not only Zadok, but also his father Ahitub before him, had discharged the duties of high priest in the tabernacle at Gibeon, while the connection of Eli's sons with the office came to an end with the slaughter of Ahijah (Ahimelech) and all the priesthood at Nob (1 Sam. xxii.); for Abiathar, the only son of Ahimelech, and the single survivor of that massacre, fled to David, and accompanied him continuously in his flight before Saul (1 Sam. xxiL 20-23). But, not content with the slaughter of the priests in Nob, Saul also smote the city itself with the edge of the sword; whence it is probable, although all definite information to that effect is wranting, that it was in consequence of this catastrophe that the tabernacle was removed to Gibeon and the high-priesthood entrusted to Zadok' s father, a man of the line of Eleazar, because the only son of Ahimelech, and the only representative of Ithamar's line, had fled to David. If this view be correct, of the ancestors of Ahitub, only Amariah, Meraioth, and Zerahiah did not hold the office of high priest. But if these had neither been supplanted by Eli nor had rendered themselves unworthy of the office by criminal conduct; if the only reason why the possession of the high-priesthood was transferred to Eli wTas, that Ozi's son Zerahiah was not equal to the discharge of the duties of the office under the difficult circumstances of the time; and if Eli's grandson Ahitub succeeded his grandfather in the office at a time when God had already announced to Eli by prophets the approaching ruin of his house, then Zerahiah, Meraioth, and Amariah, although not de facto in possession of the high-priesthood, might still be looked upon as de jure holders of the dignity, and so be introduced in the genealogies of Eleazar as such. In this way the difficulty is completely overcome.
But it is somewhat more difficult to explain the other fact, that our register on the one hand gives too many names for the earlier period and too few for the later time, and on the other hand is contradicted by some definite statements of the historical books. We find too few names for the time from the death of Aaron to the death of Uzzi (Ozi), when Eli became high priest, — a period of 299 years (vide the Chronological View of the Period of the Judges, ii. 1, S. 217). Five high priests — Eleazar, Phinehas, Abishua, Bukki, and Uzzi — are too few; for in that case each one of them must have discharged the office for 60 years, and have begotten the son who succeeded him in the office only in his 60th year, or the grandson must have regularly succeeded the grandfather in the office, — all of which suppositions appear somewhat incredible. Clearly, therefore, intermediate names must have been omitted in our register. To the period from Eli till the deposition of Abiathar, in the beginning of Solomon's reign — which, according to the chronological survey, was a period of 139 years — the last five names from Zerahiah to Zadok correspond; and as 24 years are thus assigned to each, and Zadok held the office for a number of years more under Solomon, we may reckon an average of 30 years to each generation. For the following period of about 417 years from Solomon, or the completion of the temple, till the destruction of the temple by the Chaldseans, the twelve names from Ahimaaz the son of Zadok to Jehozadak, who was led away into captivity, give the not incredible average of from 34 to 35 years for each generation, so that in this part of our register not many breaks need be supposed. But if we examine the names enumerated, we find (1) that no mention is made of the high priest Jehoiada, who raised the youthful Joash to the throne, and was his adviser during the first years of his reign (2 Kings xi., and 2 Chron. xxii. 10, xxiv. 2), and that under Ahaz, Urijah, who indeed is called only jHbn, but who was certainly high priest (2 Kings xvi. 10 ff.), is omitted; and (2) we find thafrthe name Azariah occurs three times (vers. 35, 36, and 40), on which Berth, remarks: a Azariah is the name of the high priest in the time of Solomon (1 Kings iv. 2), in the time of Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 17), and in the time of Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxi. 10)." Besides this, we meet with an Amariah, the fifth after Zadok, whom Lightf., Oehler, and others consider to be the high priest of that name under Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron* xix. 11. And finally, (3) in the historical account in 2 Kings xxii. 4 ff., Hilkiah is mentioned as high priest under Josiah, while according to our register (ver. 39) Hilkiah begat Azariah; whence we must conclude either that Hilkiah is not the high priest of that name under Josiah, or Azariah is not the person of that name who lived in the time of Hezekiah. As regards the omission of the names Urijah and Jehoiada in our register, Urijah may have been passed over as an unimportant man; but Jehoiada had exerted far too important an influence on the fate of the kingdom of Judah to allow of his being so overlooked. The only possibilities in his case are, either that he occurs in our register under another name, owing to his having had, like so many others, two different names, or that the name SHjrP has fallen out through an old error in the transcription of the genealogical list. The latter supposition, viz. that Jehoiada has fallen out before Johanan, is the more probable. Judging from 2 Kings xii. 3 and 2 Chron. xxiv. 2, Jehoiada died under Joash, at least five or ten years before the king, and consequently from 127 to 132 years after Solomon, at the advanced age of 130 years (2 Chron. xxiv. 15). He was therefore born shortly before or after the death of Solomon, being a great-grandson of Zadok, who may have died a considerable time before Solomon, as he had filled the office of high priest at Gibeon under David for a period of 30 years.
Then, if we turn our attention to the thrice recurring name Azariah, we see that the Azariah mentioned in 1 Kin^s iv. 2 cannot be regarded as the high priest; for the word jnb in this passage does not denote the high priest, but the viceroy of the kingdom (vide on the passage). But besides, this Azariah cannot be the same person as the Azariah in ver. 35 of our genealogy, because he is called a son of Zadok, while our Azariah is introduced as the son of Ahimaaz, the son of Zadok, and consequently as a grandson of Zadok; and the grandson of Zadok who is mentioned as being high priest along with Abiathar, 1 Kings iv. 4, could not have occupied in his grandfather's time the first place among the highest public officials of Solomon. The Azariah mentioned in 1 Kings iv. 2 as the son of Zadok must not be considered to be a brother of the Ahimaaz of our register, for we very seldom find a nephew and uncle called by the same name. As to the Azariah of ver. 36, the son of Johanan, it is remarked, " This is he who was priest (or who held the priest's office; |H3, cf. Ex. xl. 13, Lev. xvi. 32) in the house (temple) which Solomon had built in Jerusalem." R. Sal. and Kimchi have connected this remark with the events narrated in 2 Chron. xxvi. 17, referring it to the special jealousy of King Uzziah's encroachments on the priest's office, in arrogating to himself in the temple the priestly function of offering incense in the holy place. Against this, indeed, J. H.
Mich, lias raised the objection, quod tamen chronologies rationes vix admittunt; and it is true that this encroachment of Uzziah's happened 200 years after Solomon's death, while the Azariah mentioned in our register is the fourth after Zadok. But if the name Jehoiada has been dropped out before Johanan, and Jehoiada held the high priest's office for a considerable time under Joash, the high-priesthood of his grandson Azariah would coincide with Uzziah's reign, when of course the chronological objection to the above-mentioned explanation of the words fcttn '\X\ jna 1BW is removed.1 But lastly, the difficulty connected with the fact that in our passage Azariah follows Hilkiah, while in 2 Kings xxii. 4 ff. and 2 Chron. xxxi. 10, 13, Azariah occurs as high priest under King Hezekiah, and Hilkiah in the time of his great-grandson Josiah, cannot be cleared away by merely changing the order of the names Hilkiah and Azariah. For, apart altogether from the improbability of such a transposition having taken place in a register formed as this is, " Shallum begat Hilkiah, and Hilkiah begat Azariah, and Azariah begat," the main objection to it is the fact that between Azariah, ver. 26, who lived under Uzziah, and Hilkiah, four names are introduced; so that on this supposition, during the time which elapsed between Uzziah's forcing his way into the temple till the passover under Hezekiah, i.e. during a period of from 55 to 60 years,
1 Bertheau's explanation is inadmissible. He says: " If we consider
that in the long line of the high priests, many of them bearing the same name, it would naturally suggest itself to distinguish the Azariah who first discharged the duties of his office in the temple, in order to bring a fixed chronology into the enumeration of the names; and if we recollect that a high priest Azariah, the son, or according to our passage more definitely the grandson, of Zadok, lived in the time of Solomon; and finally, if we consider the passage chap. vi. 17, we must hold that the words, ' He it is who discharged the duties of priest in the temple which Solomon had built in Jerusalem,' originally stood after the name Azariah in ver. 35; cf. 1 Kings iv. 2."
All justification of the proposed transposition is completely taken away by the fact that the Azariah of 1 Kings iv. 2 was neither high priest nor the same person as the Azariah in ver. 35 of our register; and it is impossible that a grandson of Zadok whom Solomon appointed to the high-priesthood, instead of Abiathar, can have been the first who discharged the duties of high priest in the temple. Oehler's opinion (in Herzog's Realencyklop. vi. 205), that the Amariah who follows Azariah (ver. 37) is identical with the Amariah under Jehoshaphat, is not less improbable; for Jehoshaphat was king sixty-one years after Solomon's death, and during these sixty-one years the four high priests who are named between Zadok and Amariah could not have succeeded each other.
four generations must have followed one another, which is quite impossible. In addition to this, between Hezekiah and Josiah came the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, who reigned 55 years and 2 years respectively; and from the passover of Hezekiah to the finding of the book of the law by the high priest Hilkiah in the eighteenth year of Josiah, about 90 years had elapsed, whence it is clear that on chronological grounds Hilkiah cannot well have been the successor of Azariah in the high-priesthood. The Azariah of ver. 39 f., therefore, cannot be identified with the Azariah who was high priest under Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxxi. 10); and no explanation seems possible, other than the supposition that between Ahitub and Zadok the begetting of Azariah has been dropped out. On this assumption the Hilkiah mentioned in ver. 39 may be the high priest in the time of Josiah, although between him and the time when Jehozadak was led away into exile three names, including that of Jehozadak, are mentioned, while from the eighteenth year of Josiah till the destruction of the temple by the Chaldseans only 30 years elapsed. For Hilkiah may have been in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign very old; and at the destruction of Jerusalem, not Jehozadak, but his father Seraiah the grandson of Hilkiah, was high priest, and was executed at Riblah by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxv. 18, 21), from which we may conclude that Jehozadak was led away captive in his early years. The order in which the names occur in our register, moreover, is confirmed by Ezra vii. 1-5, where, in the statement as to the family of Ezra, the names from Seraiah onwards to Amariah ben- Azariah occur in the same order. The correspondence would seem to exclude any alterations of the order, either by transposition of names or by the insertion of some which had been dropped; but yet it only proves that both these genealogies have been derived from the same authority, and does not at all remove the possibility of this authority itself having had some defects. The probability of such breaks as we suppose in the case of Jehoiada and Azariah, who lived under Hezekiah, is shown, apart altogether from the reasons which have been already brought forward in support of it, by the fact that our register has only eleven generations from Zadok, the contemporary of Solomon, to Seraiah, who was slain at the destruction of Jerusalem; while the royal house of David shows seventeen generations, viz. the twenty kings of Judah, omitting Athaliah, and Jehoahaz and Zedekiah, the last two as being brothers of Jehoiakim (1 Chron.
iii. 10-27). Even supposing that the king's sons were, as a rule, earlier married, and begat children earlier than the priests, yet the difference between eleven and seventeen generations for the same period is too great, and is of itself sufficient to suggest that in our register of the high priests names are wanting, and that the three or four high priests known to us from the historical books who are wanting — Amariah under Jehoshaphat, Jehoiada under Joash, (Urijah under Ahaz,) and Azariah under Hezekiah — were either passed over or had fallen out of the list made use of by the author of the Chronicle.1 — Ver. 41. Jehozadak is the father of Joshua who returned from exile with Zerubbabel, and was the first high priest in the restored community (Ezra iii. 2, v. 2; Hagg. i. 1). After?J?n, " he went forth," rviaa is to be supplied from '131 Hiittna, " he went into exile " to Babylon; cf. Jer. xlix. 3.
Chap. vi. The families and cities of the Levites. — Vers. 1-34. Register of the families of the Levites. — This is introduced by an enumeration of the sons and grandsons of Levi (vers. 1-4), which is followed by lists of families in six lines of descent: (a) the descendants of Gershon (vers. 5-7), of Kohath (vers. 1-13), and of Merari (vers. 14 and 15); and (6) the genealogies of David's chief musicians (vers. 16 and 17), of Heman the Kohathite (vers. 18-23), of Asaph the Gershonite (vers. 24-28), and of Ethan the Merarite (vers. 29-32); and in vers. 33, 34, some notes as to the service performed by the other Levites and the priests are added.
Vers. 1-4. The sons of Levi are in ver. 1 again enumerated as in v. 27; then in vers. 2-4a the sons of these three sons, i.e. the grandsons of Levi, are introduced, while in chap. v. 28 only the sons of Kohath are mentioned. The only object of this enumeration is to make quite clear the descent of the Levitic families which follow. The name of the first son of Levi is in vers. 1, 2, 4, etc. of this chapter Bfenjl, which was the name of Moses' son, cf. xxiii. 15 f.; whereas in v. 27 and in the Pentateuch we find a different pronunciation, viz. tfBha. The names of Levi's grandsons in vers. 2-4a coincide with the statements of the Pentateuch, Ex. vi. 17-19, and Num. iii. 17-20, cf. xxvi. 57 f. Bertheau and other commentators consider the words in 46, u and these are the
1 The extra-biblical information concerning the prse-exilic high priests in Josephus and the Seder Olam, is, in so far as it differs from the account of the Old Testament, without any historical warrant. Vide the comparison of these in Lightfoot, Ministerium tcmpli, Opp. ed. ii. vol. i. p. 682 sqq.; Sclden, De success, in pontijic. lib. i.; and Keland, Aniiquitatt. ss. ii. c. 2.
families of Levi according to their fathers," to be a " concluding subscription" to the statements of vers. l-4a, and would remove) before n?X? as not compatible with this supposition. But in this he is wrong: for although the similar statement in Ex. vi. 20 is a subscription, yet it is in Num. iii. 20 a superscription, and must in our verse also be so understood; for otherwise the enumeration of the descendants of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, which follows, would be brought in very abruptly, without any connecting particle, and the) before n?K points to the same conclusion.
Vers. 5-15. The three lists of the descendants of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari are similar to one another in plan, and in all, each name is connected with the preceding by to, "his son," but they differ greatly in the number of the names. — Vers. 5 and 6. The p before t^Bn? is introductory: " as to Gershom." Those of his descendants who are here enumerated belong to the family of his oldest son Libni, which is traced down through seven generations to Jeaterai, a name not elsewhere met with. Of the intermediate names, Johath, Zimmah, and Zerah occur also among the descendants of Asaph, who is descended from the line of Shimei, vers. 24-28. — Vers. 7-13. The genealogy of the descendants of Kohath consists of three lists of names, each of which commences afresh with \^, vers. 7, 10, and 13; yet we learn nothing from it as to the genealogical connection of these three lines. The very beginning, " The sons of Kohath, Amminadab his son, Korah his son, Assir his son," is somewhat strange. For, according to Ex. vi. 18, 21, and 24, Kohath's second son is called Izhar, whose son was Korah, whose sons were Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph. Amminadab is nowhere met with as a son of Kohath; but among the descendants of Uzziel, a prince of a father' s-house is met with in the time of David who bore this name. The name Amminadab occurs also in the time of Moses, in the genealogies of the tribe of Judah, chap. ii. 10, Num. i. 7, Ruth i. 19, as that of the father of the prince Nahshon, and of Elisheba, whom Aaron took to wife, Ex. vi. 23. But since the names Korah and Assir point to the family of Izhar, the older commentators supposed the Amminadab of our verse to be only another name for Izhar; while Bertheau, on the contrary, conjectures u that as an Amminadab occurs in the lists of the descendants of Kohath as father-in-law of Aaron, Amminadab has been substituted for Izhar by an ancient error, which might very easily slip into an abridgment of more detailed lists." But we have here no trace of an abridgment of more detailed lists. According to Ex. vi. 21 and 24, Korah was a son of Izhar, and Assir a son of Korah; and consequently in our genealogies only the name Izhar is wanting between Korah and Kohath, while instead of him we have Amminadab. An exchange or confusion of the names of Izhar and Amminadab the father-in-law of Aaron, is as improbable as the supposition that Amminadab is another name for Izhar, since the genealogies of the Pentateuch give only the name Izhar. Yet no third course is open, and we must decide to accept either one or the other of these suppositions. For that our verses contain a genealogy, or fragments of genealogies, of the Kohathite line of Izhar there can be no doubt, when we compare them with the genealogy (vers. 18-23) of the musician Heman, a descendant of Kohath, which also gives us the means of explaining the other obscurities in our register. In vers. 7 and 8 the names of Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph, and again Assir, follow that of Korah, with b3 after each. This W3 cannot be taken otherwise than as denoting that the names designate so many consecutive generations; and the only peculiarity in the list is, that the conjunction 1 is found before Abiasaph and the second Assir, while the other names do not have it. But if we compare the genealogy in Ex. vi. with this enumeration, we find that there, in ver. 24, the same three names, Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph, which are here enumerated as those of the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Korah, are said to be the names of the sons of the Izharite Korah. Further, from Heman's genealogy in ver. 22, we learn that the second Assir of our list is a son of Abiasaph, and, according to ver. 22 and ver. 8, had a son Tahath. Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph must consequently be held to have been brothers, and the following Assir a son of the last-named Abiasaph, whose family is in ver. 9 further traced through four generations (Tahath, Uriel, Uzziah, and Shaul). Instead of these four, we find in vers. 22 and 21 the names Tahath, Zephaniah, Azariah, and Joel. Now although the occurrence of Uzziah and Azariah as names of the same king immediately suggests that in our register also Uzziah and Azariah are two names of the same person, yet the divergence in the other names, on the one hand Zephaniah for Joel, and on the other Uriel for Shaul, is strongly opposed to this conjecture. The discrepancy can scarcely be naturally explained in any other way, than by supposing that after Tahath