Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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1 Chronicles 1:1-4 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, Diphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. The sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama, Sabteca. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. Cush became the father of Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. Mizraim became the father of Ludim, Anamim, Lehabim, Naphtuhim, Pathrusim, Casluhim (where the Philistines came from), and Caphtorim. Canaan became the father of Sidon his firstborn, Heth, the Jebusite, and the Amorite, the Girgashite, the Hivite, the Arkite, the Sinite, the Arvadite, the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. The sons of Shem: Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech. Arpachshad became the father of Shelah, and Shelah became the father of Eber. To Eber were born two sons: the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. Joktan became the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Ebal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram (also called Abraham). The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael. These are their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam, Mishma, Dumah, Massa, Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael. The sons of Keturah, Abraham’s concubine: she bore Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. The sons of Jokshan: Sheba and Dedan. The sons of Midian: Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All these were the sons of Keturah. Abraham became the father of Isaac. The sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel. The sons of Esau: Eliphaz, Reuel, Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. The sons of Eliphaz: Teman, Omar, Zephi, Gatam, Kenaz, Timna, and Amalek. The sons of Reuel: Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah. The sons of Seir: Lotan, Shobal, Zibeon, Anah, Dishon, Ezer, and Dishan. The sons of Lotan: Hori and Homam; and Timna was Lotan’s sister. The sons of Shobal: Alian, Manahath, Ebal, Shephi, and Onam. The sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. The son of Anah: Dishon. The sons of Dishon: Hamran, Eshban, Ithran, and Cheran. The sons of Ezer: Bilhan, Zaavan, and Jaakan. The sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran.
Parallel Translations
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Adam, Seth, Enosh,
Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared,
Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech,
Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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Adam, Sheth, Enosh,
Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered,
Henoch, Methuselah, Lamech,
Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Show all 3 translations
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ADAM, SETH, Enosh;
Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared;
Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech;
Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (21)
- Genesis 4:25–5:32 (v1) Adam knew his wife again. She gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, saying, “for God has given me another child instead of Abel, for…
- Luke 3:37 (v2) the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan,
- Luke 3:38 (v1) the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
- Genesis 5:32 (v4) Noah was five hundred years old, then Noah became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
- Jude 1:14 (v3) About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,
Show all 21 cross-references
- Genesis 5:12-20 (v2) Kenan lived seventy years, then became the father of Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he became the father of Mahalalel eight hundred forty…
- Genesis 9:18 (v4) The sons of Noah who went out from the ship were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham is the father of Canaan.
- Genesis 5:9 (v2) Enosh lived ninety years, and became the father of Kenan.
- Genesis 5:21-31 (v3) Enoch lived sixty-five years, then became the father of Methuselah. After Methuselah’s birth, Enoch walked with God for three hundred…
- Genesis 6:8-10 (v4) But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes. This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people…
- Genesis 7:1 (v4) Yahweh said to Noah, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation.
- Genesis 9:29 (v4) All the days of Noah were nine hundred fifty years, and then he died.
- Isaiah 54:9-10 (v4) “For this is like the waters of Noah to me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah will no more go over the earth, so I have sworn…
- Ezekiel 14:14 (v4) though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver only their own souls by their righteousness,” says the Lord…
- Matthew 24:37-38 (v4) “As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and…
- Luke 3:36 (v4) the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech,
- Luke 3:36-37 (v3) the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the…
- Luke 17:26 (v4) As it was in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man.
- Hebrews 11:5 (v3) By faith, Enoch was taken away, so that he wouldn’t see death, and he was not found, because God translated him. For he has had testimony…
- Hebrews 11:7 (v4) By faith, Noah, being warned about things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared a ship for the saving of his house, through which…
- 2 Peter 2:5 (v4) and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (23 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 Meaning, that Seth was Adam’s son, and Enosh Seth’s…
Meaning, that Seth was Adam’s son, and Enosh Seth’s son.
Hebrew, words of days.
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Or, things omitted, to wit, in the books of the kings.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 1Ch 1:1 Adam, Sheth, Enosh,
1Ch 1:1 Adam, Sheth, Enosh,
"CHRONICLES" we call these two books, - anciently but one, - which is the same in effect with that of the Hebrews’ Dibr ehaiamim, Words, or Deeds, of Days. Paralipomena, or Remains, the Greeks call them, because they take up many things not recorded in the Books of Kings. Yet are they not those "Books of Chronicles of Israel and Judah" we so often read of in the Books of Kings, for they long since perished, but a divine authentic epitome of them. Yea, Jerome {a} doubteth not to call these two Books of Chronicles Instrumenti Veteris Epitomen, et totius divinae historiae Chronicum. Munster calleth them, A sacred diary, The Church’s annals. They begin as high as Adam the Protoplast, - of whom nothing is read in human histories, as neither indeed of anything else that is truly ancient till the Theban and Trojan wars, as Diodorus Siculus confesseth, - and show how by him the world was populated, according to that first promise, {Gen 1:28} and the descant of some ancients upon the name of Adam. A, that is, Aνατολη, or the east; D, that is, Dυσμος, the west; A, that is, Aρτος, the north; and M, that is, Mεσημβρια, the south: for all these four quarters of the world were and are populated by Adam’s posterity, some of whom, as the antediluvian patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons - all except Dan and Zebulon - are registered in these first eight chapters. In the first four verses of this chapter we have the line of Adam to Noah, no other of the posterity of Adam being mentioned, because, saith one, they were all destroyed in the flood: whereunto may be added, that the genealogy of the second Adam is here mainly intended, and his progenitors principally mentioned.
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Ver. 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh.] Thus this prompt scribe and perfect genealogist, Ezra, as is generally thought, beginneth his holy history.
“ Primaque aborigine mundi,
Ad sua perpetuum deducit secla volumen. ”
{a} In prolo. Galeat.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 i.e. Adam begat Sheth; and so in the following…
i.e. Adam begat Sheth; and so in the following particulars. For brevity sake he only mentions their names; but the rest is easily understood out of the former books, and from the nature of the thing; and from some following passages where the sense is completed.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 This paragraph has Adam for its first word and…
This paragraph has Adam for its first word and Abraham for its last. Between the creation of the former and the birth of the latter were 2000 years, almost the one-half of which time Adam himself lived. Adam was the common father of our flesh, Abraham the common father of the faithful. By the breach which the former made of the covenant of innocency, we were all made miserable; by the covenant of grace made with the latter, we all are, or may be, made happy. We all are, by nature, the seed of Adam, branches of that wild olive. Let us see to it that, by faith, we become the seed of Abraham (Rom 4:11, Rom 4:12), that we be grafted into the good olive and partake of its root and fatness.
I. The first four verses of this paragraph, and the last four, which are linked together by Shem (Ch1 1:4, Ch1 1:24), contain the sacred line of Christ from Adam to Abraham, and are inserted in his pedigree, Luk 3:34-38, the order ascending as here it descends. This genealogy proves the falsehood of that reproach, As for this man, we know not whence he is. Bishop Patrick well observes here that, a genealogy being to be drawn of the families of the Jews, this appears as the peculiar glory of the Jewish nation, that they alone were able to derive their pedigree from the first man that God created, which no other nation pretended to, but abused themselves and their posterity with fabulous accounts of their originals, the Arcadians fancying that they were before the moon, the people of Thessaly that they sprang from stones, the Athenians that they grew out of the earth, much like the vain imaginations which some of the philosophers had of the origin of the universe. The account which the holy scripture gives both of the creation of the world and of the rise of nations carries with it as clear evidences of its own truth as those idle traditions do of their own vanity and falsehood.
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II. All the verses between repeat the account of the replenishing of the earth by the sons of Noah after the flood. 1. The historian begins with those who were strangers to the church, the sons of Japhet, who were planted in the isles of the Gentiles, those western parts of the world, the countries of Europe. Of these he gives a short account (Ch1 1:5-7), because with these the Jews had hitherto had little or no dealings. 2. He proceeds to those who had many of them been enemies to the church, the sons of Ham, who moved southward towards Africa and those parts of Asia which lay that way. Nimrod the son of Cush began to be an oppressor, probably to the people of God in his time. But Mizraim, from whom came the Egyptians, and Canaan, from whom came the Canaanites, are both of them names of great note in the Jewish story; for with their descendants the Israel of God had severe struggles to get out of the land of Egypt and into the land of Canaan; and therefore the branches of Mizraim are particularly recorded (Ch1 1:11, Ch1 1:12), and of Canaan, Ch1 1:13-16. See at what a rate God valued Israel when he gave Egypt for their ransom (Isa 43:3), and cast out all these nations before them, Psa 80:8. 3. He then gives an account of those that were the ancestors and allies of the church, the posterity of Shem, Ch1 1:17-23. These peopled Asia, and spread themselves eastward. The Assyrians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Arabians, descended from these. At first the originals of the respective nations were known; but at this day, we have reason to think, the nations are so mingled with one another, by the enlargement of commerce and dominion, the transplanting of colonies, the carrying away of captives, and many other circumstances, that no one nation, no, nor the greatest part of any, is descended entire from any one of these fountains. Only this we are sure of, that God has created of one blood all nations of men; they have all descended from one Adam, one Noah. Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Mal 2:10. Our register hastens to the line of Abraham, breaking off abruptly from all the other families of the sons of Noah but that of Arphaxad, from whom Christ was to come. The great promise of the Messiah (says bishop Patrick) was translated from Adam to Seth, from him to Shem, from him to Eber, and so to the Hebrew nation, who were entrusted, above all nations, with that sacred treasure, till the promise was performed and the Messiah had come, and then that nation was made not a people.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On v1 Adam, Seth,.... These first four verses exactly agree with…
Adam, Seth,.... These first four verses exactly agree with the account of the antediluvian patriarchs in Gen 5:1, the first letter in Adam is larger than usual, as a memorial, as Buxtorf (m) observes, of the first and only man, from whence mankind had their beginning, and whose history the author had undertaken to write.
, the first letter in Adam is larger than usual, as a memorial, as Buxtorf (m) observes, of the first and only man, from whence mankind had their beginning, and whose history the author had undertaken to write.
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1 Chronicles 1:5
ch1 1:5
ch1 1:5
ch1 1:5The sons of Japheth, Gomer,.... Here begins the genealogy of the sons of Noah after the flood; of the sons of Japheth the elder, in this and the two following verses; next of the sons of Ham, the younger brother, Ch1 1:8, then of Shem, whose posterity are mentioned last, because from him, in the line of Heber, sprang Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish nation, of whom the Messiah was to come, for whose sake this genealogy is given, Ch1 1:17. The whole is the same with the account in
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v1 The descents from Adam to Noah and his sons,…
The descents from Adam to Noah and his sons, ver. 1-4. The posterity of Japheth and Ham, ver. 5-16. Of Shem to Abraham, ver. 17-27. Abraham's posterity by Ishmael, ver. 28-31. By Keturah, ver. 32, 33. The posterity of Isaac by Esau, ver. 34-54.
Sheth - Adam begat Sheth: and so in the following particulars. For brevity sake he only mentions their names; but the rest is easily understood out of the former books. This appears as the peculiar glory of the Jewish nation, that they alone were able to trace their pedigree from the first man that God created, which no other nation pretended to, but abused themselves and their posterity with fabulous accounts of their originals: the people of Thessaly fancying that they sprang from stones, the Athenians, that they grew out of the earth.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On v1 Chronological Notes relative to this Book
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES
Chronological Notes relative to this Book
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-Year of the World, 1.
-Year before Christ, according to Archbishop Usher, 4004.
-Year before the Flood, according to the common Hebrew Bible, 1656.
-Year of the Julian period, 710.
CHAPTER I
The genealogy of Adam to Noah, 1-3.
Of Noah to Abraham, 4-27.
The sons of Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac, 28.
The sons of Ishmael, 29-31.
The sons of Keturah, 32, 33.
The sons of Esau, 34-42.
A list of the kings of Edom, 43-50.
A list of the dukes of Edom, 51-54.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh] That is, Adam was the father of Sheth or Seth. Seth was the father of Enosh, Enosh the father of Kenan, and so on. No notice is taken of Cain and Abel, or of any of the other sons of Adam. One line of patriarchs, from Adam to Noah, is what the historian intended to give; and to have mentioned the posterity of Cain or Abel would have been useless, as Noah was not the immediate descendant of either. Besides, all their posterity had perished in the deluge, none remaining of the Adamic family but Noah and his children; and from these all the nations of the earth sprang.
How learned must those men be who can take for a text "The first verse of the first chapter of the first book of CHRONICLES." and find a mystery in each name; which, in the aggregate, amounts to a full view of the original perfection, subsequent fall, consequent misery, and final restoration, of MAN! O ye profound illustrators of the names of men and cities! why do ye not give us the key of your wisdom, write comments, and enlighten the world?
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v1 1Ch 1:1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh — Adam was the…
1Ch 1:1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh — Adam was the father of Sheth, and Sheth the father of Enosh, and so on to the sons of Noah. For brevity’s sake he only mentions the names, the rest being easily understood out of the former books. No mention is made of the posterity of Cain or Abel, nor of the other sons of Adam, because the sacred writer was only engaged to give a detail of the patriarchs, in a line from Adam to Noah. The history of the Bible was not designed as a history of the world, but as a history of the church, and of the deduction of the sacred promise of the seed of the woman. This was the peculiar glory of the Jewish nation, that they alone were able to trace their pedigree from the first man that God created, which no other nation pretended to, but abused themselves and their posterity with fabulous accounts of their originals; the people of Thessaly fancying that they sprang from stones, the Athenians, that they grew out of the earth.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v1 Compare the margin references and notes.
Compare the margin references and notes.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 Seth. Protestants, "Sheth, Enosh, Kenan:" but in Genesis they…
Seth. Protestants, "Sheth, Enosh, Kenan:" but in Genesis they agree with us, which shews that the translator of the two different books is different, and that there is a want of uniformity in the plan adopted by king James I. (Haydock) --- The posterity of Cain is neglected, as it all perished in the deluge. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1
THE BOOKS OF CHRONICLES
__________
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FIRST BOOK
§ 1. GENEALOGICAL TABLES OR PEDIGREES, WITH SHORT HISTORICAL STATEMENTS INTERSPERSED.—CH. 1–9
a. Genealogies of the Patriarchs from Adam to Isaac’s Sons Israel and Edom, with the Posterity of the Latter till the Times of the Kings, Ch. 1
1Adam, Sheth, Enosh. 2Kenan, Mahalalel, Jered. 3Henoch, Methushelah, 4Lamech. Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 5The sons of Japheth: Gomer, 6and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. And the sons of Gomer: Ashkenaz, and Riphath,1 and Togarmah. 7And the sons of Javan: Elisha, and Tarshishah, Kittim, and Rodanim.2 8The sons of Ham: Cush and Mizraim, Put and Kanaan. 9And the sons of Kush: Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Rama, and Sabtecha. And the sons of Rama: Sheba 10and Dedan. And Kush begat Nimrod; he began to be a hero on the earth. 11And Mizraim begat the Ludim,3 and the Anamim, and the Lehabim, and the 12Naphtuhim. And the Pathrusim, and the Kasluhim, of whom came the 13Pelishtim, and the Kaphtorim. And Kanaan begat Zidon, his first-born, and 14, 15Heth. And the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite. And the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite. 16And the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. 17The sons of Shem: Elam, and Asshur, and Arpakshad, 18and Lud, and Aram, and Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Meshech.4 And 19Arpakshad begat Shelah, and Shelah begat Heber. And to Heber were born two sons; the name of the one was Peleg [division]; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan. 20And Joktan begat 21Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah. And Hadoram, and 22Uzal, and Diklah. And Ebal, and Abimael, and Sheba. 23And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab. All these are sons of Joktan.
24Shem, Arpakshad, Shelah. 25Eber,Peleg,Reu. 26Serug, Nahor, Terah. 27Abram; 28that is, Abraham. The sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael. 29These are their generations: Ishmael’s first-born was Nebaioth; then Kedar, and Adbeel, and 30, 31Mibsam. Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema. Jetur, Naphish, 32and Kedemah: these are sons of Ishmael. And the sons of Keturah, Abraham’s concubine: she bare Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah; and Jokshan’s sons: Sheba and Dedan. 33And the sons of Midian: Ephah, and Epher, and Henoch, and Abida, and Eldaah: all these are the sons of Keturah. 34And Abraham begat Isaac; the sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel. 35The sons of Esau: Eliphaz, Reuel, and Jeush, and Jalam, and Korah. 36The sons of Eliphaz; Teman, and Omar, Zephi, and Gatam, Kenaz, and Timnah, and Amalek. 37The sons of Reuel; Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah. 38And the sons of Seir: Lotan, and Shobal, and Zibon, and Anah, and Dishan, and Ezer, and Dishan. 39And the sons of Lotan: Hori and Homam; and Lotan’s sister was Timnah. 40The sons of Shobal: Aljan,5 and Manahath, and Ebal, Shephi,6 and Onam; and the sons of Zibon: Ajah and Anah. 41The sons of Anah: Dishon; and the sons of Dishon: Hamran,7 and Eshban, and Ithran, and Keran. 42The sons of Ezer: Bilhan, and Zaavan, and Jaakan; the sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran.
43And these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom before the sons of Israel had kings: Bela, son of Beor; and the name of his city was Dinhabah. 44, 45And Bela died, and Jobab, son of Zera of Bozrah, reigned in his stead. And Jobab died, and Husham, of the land of the Temanites, reigned in his stead. 46And Husham died, and Hadad, son of Bedad, who smote Midian in the land 47of Moab, reigned in his stead; and the name of his city was Ajuth.8 And 48Hadad died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his stead. And Samlah 49died, and Shaul of Rehoboth by the river reigned in his stead. And Shaul 50died, and Baal-hanan, son of Hakbor, reigned in his stead. And Baal-hanan died, and Hadad9 reigned in his stead; and the name of his city was Pahi; and the name of his wife was Mehetabel, daughter of Matred, daughter of 51Mezahab. And Hadad died; and the dukes of Edom were: the duke of 52Timnah, duke of Aljah,10 duke of Jetheth. Duke of Oholibamah, duke of 53Elah, duke of Pinon. Duke of Kenaz, duke of Teman, duke of Mibzar. 54Duke of Magdiel, duke of Hiram: these are the dukes of Edom.
EXEGETICAL
Preliminary Remark.—The whole of these patriarchal forefathers of the house of David down to Israel and Edom, sons of Isaac, appear to be divided into two nearly equal parts, to the second of which is added an appendix on the descendants of Edom till the times of David. The first part, 1Ch_1:1-23, enumerates the 10 antediluvian patriarchs from Adam to Noah, the 3 sons of Noah, and the 70 nations descending from them (on this number 70, see the Remark under 1Ch_1:23). In the second part, 1Ch_1:24-42, are given the 10 generations from Shem to Abraham, the sons of Abraham by Hagar, Keturah, and Sarah, and the stocks derived from them, which again amount to 70 (see under 1Ch_1:42). The appendix, 1Ch_1:43-54, mentions the kings of the Edomites before David, that are also given in Genesis 36, as well as the 11 there named dukes of Edom. In all these genealogical and ethnological statements the author adheres closely to the matter, and where he does not merely abbreviate, as several times in the second part, and partly also in the appendix, even to the words of Genesis, of which 1 Chronicles 5, 10 (the table of nations) serve him till 1Ch_1:23, and 1 Chronicles 2, 25, 36 till the end as sources and models. He reports in the briefest manner concerning the patriarchs before Noah, and concerning Noah himself, and his sons (1Ch_1:1-4), of whom he merely gives the names, 13 in number, without even remarking that the first 10 of these names denote successive generations and the last 3 brothers. He might certainly presuppose in his readers sufficient knowledge of the relations of these holy and venerable names from the earliest foretime. He knew that to them as well as to himself belonged “the faculty to perceive in all these names the indications and foundations of a rich ancient history” (Berth.). And it was scarcely otherwise with the names of the following series, reaching further into the more known history, which he also brings together in a brief and bare report. Even where we are unable to perceive the historical importance of the prominent names, and the grounds on which they must have been of interest to every pious Israelite, the fact of such importance is to be presumed in every case, and for every single name. Comp. Ewald, Gesch. d. Volkes Israel, 2d edit. i. 1Chr 479: “These dry names from a hoary antiquity when we know how to awaken them from their sleep, do not remain so dead and stiff, but announce and revive the most important traditions of the ancient nations and families, like the petrifactions and mountain strata of the earth, which, rightly questioned, tell the history of long vanished ages.”11
§ I. The Patriarchs before Noah, the three Sons of Noah, and the (70) Nations descending from them: 1Ch_1:1-23
1. From Adam to Noah’s Sons: 1Ch_1:1-4.—On the stringing together of the bare names, without any explanation, see Preliminary Remark. The names are all taken from Genesis 5 : the rich contents of this oldest genealogy of primeval history is here reduced to the shortest possible form of an abstract. For the conjectural etymology of the several names (Adam = man ; Sheth = substitute; Enosh = weak, frail man; Kenan = gain or gainful, etc.), see vol. i. p. 121 f. of the Bibelwerk.—The order of the names of the three sons of Noah is Shem, Ham, and Japheth; as always in Genesis also, though Ham (Gen_9:24) was the youngest of the three. Comp. our Introductory Remarks on the prophet Daniel (Bibelwerk, part xiii. p. 11), where it is made probable that this order, like that of the names Noah, Daniel, and Joab (in Ezekiel), depends on euphonic principles (so Delitzsch, Komm. über die Genesis , 4 th edit. 1872, p. 233)
2. From Noah’s Sons to Abraham; the Table of Nations: 1Ch_1:5-23.—This abstract from the Mosaic table of nations Genesis 10 has abridged the larger genealogical ethnographic account to the present narrow limits, chiefly by omitting the opening and closing notes, and passing over the remarks on the kingdom of Nimrod at Babel, and the spread of the Shemites and Hamites in their countries (1Ch_1:5; 1Ch_1:9-12; 1Ch_1:18-20). Here, again, there is that abbreviating and condensing process which is characteristic of the author. For the ethnological and geographical import of the several names, comp. the commentary on Genesis by the editor (vol. i. p. 171 of the Bibelwerk), and the monographs on the table of nations there cited.
a. The Japhethites: 1Ch_1:5-7.—The names of the descendants of Japheth, 14 in number (7 sons and 7 grandsons), open the series in Genesis 10 of stems and nations to be enumerated, perhaps because they represented the strongest and most widely-spread body (Japheth = “enlarging,” Gen_9:27), scarcely because he passed for the firstborn of Noah; for Shem, who is always placed before Japheth, even when only the two are named together, is to be regarded as such; see especially the decisive passages, Gen_9:23; Gen_9:26 (against Starke, Bertheau, etc.). [These texts are not decisive; and Shem was born in the 503d year of Noah, Gen_11:11, and therefore two years at least after Japheth, Gen_5:32,–J. G. M.]—The view recently again maintained with ingenuity and learning by J. G. Müller (Die Semiten in ihrem Verhältniss zu Chamiten und Japhetiten, Gotha 1872), that the so-called Shemites are nothing but Japhethites or Indogermans Hamitized in language, is in any case at variance with the Biblical genealogy of the sons of Noah, whether Shem or Japheth be the first-born.
1Ch_1:6. Riphath. This form, rejected by the Masoretes in favour of the probably erroneous (resting on an old clerical error) דּיפַת, has not only the weight of so old witnesses as the Sept. and Vulg. for it (see the Crit. Note on 1Ch_1:6), but also the circumstance that plausible ethnographic explanations can be adduced for Riphath, but not for Diphath; comp. the name ‛Ριφαταῖοι = Παφλαγόν in Joseph. Antiq. i. 6, and the ὄρη ‛Ρίπαια, on the ground of which Knobel has attempted to show in Riphath the ancestor of the Kelts (against which the Paphlagonian cities Tibia and Tobata [Bochart, Geogr. Sacra, p. 198 seq.], produced by the ancients in defence of the reading דִּיפַת, cannot, from their smallness and insignificance, be taken into account).
1Ch_1:7. Tarshishah (תַּרְשִׁישָׁה), a later form for תַּרְשִׁישׁ, which is usual in Gen. (1Ch_10:4) and elsewhere in the O. T. (also 2Ch_9:21; 2Ch_20:36), the ah of motion having in this form melted into one word with the name itself. “With this are to be compared the modern Greek names, obtained by the wearing away of the proposition εἰς and the article, Stalimene = Lemnos, Stambul = (Konstantino)polis, Satines = Athenæ, Stanko= Kos,” etc. (Berth.).—Rodanim, רוֹדָנִים; many transcribers and older editors wish to change this into the דֹּדָנִים of Gen_10:4, although even there some old authorities (Sam., Sept., Jerome, Quœst. in Gen.) read רוֹדָנִים. The decision is difficult, because, on the one hand, Knobel’s reference of Dodanim to the Dardani is verbally doubtful; on the other hand, the Rhodians ( = Rodanim) appear too unimportant a part of the Hellenic race to be put on the same footing with Æolians (= Elishah), Etruscans (= Tarshish), and Cyprians or Karians (= Kittim). And yet the placing of Kittim and Rodanim together, and the consideration that the sea trade of the Rhodians might have become very important for such oriental nations as the Phœnicians and the Hebrews, appear to speak more for the reading of our book than for the original (comp. Berth.). And if Dodanim were to pass for the original form, and yet the application to the Dardani be untenable, the reference to Dodona would be internally still less probable than that to the Rhodians.
b. The Hamites: 1Ch_1:8-16.—Of these are named 4 sons, 24 grandsons, and 2 great-grandsons, being 30 descendants in all. Nimrod, 1Ch_1:10, does not count among the grandsons, as he appears only as a famous individual (hero), not as a head or founder of a people (patriarch). His introduction, therefore, is different from that of those previously named, not by וּבְנֵי (see 1Ch_1:5-9; and comp. Gen_10:2-7), but by יָלַד, as Gen_10:8, which verse is literally transcribed by the Chronist. By the formula: “he began to be a hero on the earth,” the nature and import of Nimrod are briefly and pithily expressed, so that a repetition of the further statements of Genesis concerning him (1Ch_10:9-12) is not necessary. Comp. as a parallel from the New Testament: ὅς καὶ παρέδωκεν αὐτόν (or ὁ καὶ παραδοὺς αὐτόν), with which the evangelists are wont to characterize Judas Iscariot.—On לוּדִיִּים, 1Ch_1:11, see Critical Note.
c. The Shemites, particularly the non-Hebrews: 1Ch_1:17-23.—Of them are named in all 23 members, namely (as the parallel passage Gen_10:23 more exactly shows), 5 sons, 5 grandsons, and 16 other descendants. That in 1Ch_1:17 the names Uz, Hul, Gether, Meshech, which properly denote grandsons of Shem by Aram, are appended at once to the 5 sons of Shem (so that they appear to be his sons, and thus the number of his sons would be 9, and that of his grandsons only 1), is a circumstance sufficiently explained, as the similar case in 1Ch_1:4 of Noah’s sons: the author presumed the relation of the 4 as sons to Aram to be sufficiently known, and therefore thought it unnecessary to repeat the words וּבְנֵי אֲרָם before עוּץ from Gen_10:23. Less probable is the supposition that the words in question fell out by a mistake of the copyist, or that the Chronist, deviating from the Pentateuch, really took the nations Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech to be sons, not grandsons, of Shem (as Knobel, Völkertafel, p. 252).—Moreover, almost all manuscripts give the last name in 1Ch_1:17 מֶשֶׁךְ; only a few conform to the reading in Genesis (מַשׁ), for which also the Sept. there presents Μοσόχ = מֶשֶׁךְ; and so might the Chronist have read in the text of Genesis. It is also in favour of Meshech being the original name, that Mash as a national name is quite unknown, while Meshech occurs as the name of a Shemite or Arabic tribe along with Kedar in Psa_120:5
1Ch_1:22. Ebal, עֵיבָל, is called in the parallel Gen_10:28 rather Obal, עוֹבָל; yet the Sept. seems to have read עֵיבָל, for it gives the name as Εὐάλ. Comp. the similar but reverse case of Homam ( = Hemam) under 1Ch_1:39.—The 14 descendants of Japheth, 30 of Ham, and 26 of Shem, amount to 70 nations descended from Noah. This number the author intended to bring out; for with him, or before him, other Jewish expositors might have discovered the symbolic number 70 in the Mosaic table of nations (it may, in fact, be gathered from it; comp. J. Fürst, Gesch. der bill. Liter. und des jüdisch-hellenischen Schriftthums, i. p. 119); and this number of the nations of the globe, occasionally enlarged to 72, plays otherwise an important part in the Jewish circle of thought. This is shown by its frequent mention in the Talmud, and its occurrence in the Gnostic writings and the Pseudo-Clementine (Recogn. ii. 42). To this belong also such biblical passages as Num_9:16 and Luk_10:1 ff.; for the 70 elders appointed by Moses in the wilderness (with the 70 members of the Jewish Sanhedrin on this model), as well as the 70 disciples chosen by Jesus, appear to be due to a symbolic reference to the 70 nations of the globe (comp. Godet, Commentaire sur l’évangile de Luc, 1870, ii. p. 21). And there is actually a deeper sense in the view; that the total number of the nations of the earth is = the sacred ideal number 70 (7 x 10, the humanly complete, elevated and multiplied by the power of the Divine Spirit; comp. my Theol. naturalis, i. p. 716). And why should we not have as good a right, in the popular phraseology of Hebrew antiquity, to speak of the “70 nations of the world,” as of the 4 winds, the 4 quarters of heaven, the 12 signs of the zodiac, without uttering anything untrue or against nature, though such expressions may have no exact scientific basis? There seems then to be no reason to hesitate, from a dogmatic-apologetic point of view, to acknowledge that the number 70 was intended by the author to apply to the descendants of Noah. The only thing that can be said against it is, the absence of an express intimation, such as Matthew gives at the close of his genealogy of Jesus, in the form of a recapitulation of the several groups of numbers (1Ch_1:17). Yet the pedigree by Luke (1Ch_3:23-24) wants also such a recapitulation, though its symbolic construction out of 77 = 7 x 11 members is no less certain than that of Matthew. If Keil objects to our view, which is that of almost all recent expositors, that the number 70 is only obtained by making, “in the sons of Shem, the personal names Arpakshad, Shelah, Heber, Peleg, and Joktan to be names of nations, contrary to the view of Genesis, in which the five names denote persons, the ancestors of the nations descending from Heber through Peleg and Joktan,” this refutes nothing. For the number 70 is obtained throughout, and not merely in the case of Arpakshad, etc., by the addition of all names, those of the patriarchs, who only became nations in their sons, as well as these sons themselves, and their descendants. In other words, it is quite reasonable, and corresponds entirely with the spirit and method of the genealogizing ethnography of the Hebrews, to regard all higher or lower members of old pedigrees as in abstracto equivalent factors and representatives of definite co-ordinate races in the subsequent history, though this view may be in concreto impracticable. Comp., moreover, the evangelical-ethical principles under 1 Chronicles 9.
§ II. The Patriarchs from Shem to Abraham, and the Descendants of the latter through Ishmael, Keturah, Edom (70 stems in all): 1Ch_1:24-42
1. From Shem to Abraham: 1Ch_1:24-27.—The 10 members of this line are exactly coincident with Gen_9:10-29, though with the omission of all historical details. And the Chronist follows the genealogical account of the Masoretic text, which represents Abraham himself as the tenth of the line, not that of the Sept., which inserts a Kenan (Καϊνᾶν) between Arpakshad and Shelah, thus following a tradition that regarded Terah, the father of Abraham, as the tenth from Shem. Bertheau (in the annual report of the “Deutsche Morgenl. Gesellschaft,” 1845–46) has attempted to make it probable that this tradition was the older, and that the name קֵינָן stood originally in the text of Genesis.
1Ch_1:27. Abram, perhaps for the sake of brevity, and to avoid all needless accumulation of names, afterwards (from Gen_17:5) Abraham, in which the author, in his brief manner, notices the change of name, is alone named as a son of Terah, Nahor and Haran and their posterity being omitted.
2. Abraham’s Sons and their Descendants: 1Ch_1:28-34.—They fall, like those of Noah and Terah, into three stocks or branches under Ishmael, Keturah, and Isaac. The Chronist places the former groups first, because, like the genealogists in the primeval history, he wished first to enumerate the remote stocks, and then to take up the people of God. The same process from without to within placed the genealogy of the Japhethites and Hamites before the Shemites, and determines, further, that of Isaac’s posterity the Edomite branch is first treated, and then the Israelite.
a. Ishmael and his Twelve Sons: 1Ch_1:29-31.—The twelve names agree exactly with the list in Gen_25:12-16, with respect to the order as well as the words. And the introductory אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדוֹת, 1Ch_1:29, the predicate בְּכוֹר, “the firstborn” before Ishmael (comp. Gen_25:13), and the closing formula, “These are the sons of Ishmael” (1Ch_1:31; comp. Gen_25:16), show how closely the author adheres to the Mosaic record. The designation of Ishmael as the “first-born” is only to be explained by this faithful adherence to the original, not by the wish of the author to justify his placing the Ishmaelites before the descendants of Israel (as Bertheau seems to think); for this position needed no justification, because it necessarily followed from the genealogical method of our author (see on 1Ch_1:28). [In our author’s version of 1Ch_1:29, “the first-born” is made to refer to Nebaioth, and not to Ishmael, as above. This seems to be correct.—J. G. M.]
b. The Descendants of Keturah: 1Ch_1:32-33.—The six sons and seven grandsons of Abraham by Keturah are not given literally as in Gen_25:1-4. On the contrary, the Chronist has left out three great-grandsons there named—Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim, descendants of Dedan—whether intentionally, on account of the plural form of the names, or because he did not find them in his copy of Genesis, must remain undetermined. That Medan and Midian, 1Ch_1:32, are only different pronunciations of the same name (comp. Gen_37:28; Gen_37:36), the number of the sons of Keturah was originally and properly five, and the total number of her descendants only twelve, is an arbitrary conjecture of Bertheau, while pushing too far the endeavour to find certain symbolic numbers everywhere.
c. The Two Sons of Isaac, Esau, and Israel, and the Descendants of the former: 1Ch_1:34-42.—And Abraham begat Isaac. This notice, leading back to the statement in 1Ch_1:28, appears occasioned by Gen_25:19, where the same words (only with הוֹלִיד for וַיּוֹלֶד) occur immediately after the enumeration of the sons of Keturah. This reference to Abraham was not in itself necessary here; but comp. also the reference to Shem above in 1Ch_1:24.
1Ch_1:25. Esau’s sons, enumerated exactly after Gen_36:4-5 (though without naming their mothers, the three wives of Esau), as in general the author henceforth reports very closely from Genesis 36, following which also he annexes the Seirites or aborigines of Idumæa to the proper Edomites, and treats both as belonging to one and the same family of nations.
1Ch_1:36. Sons of Eliphaz. These, five in number, are given exactly as in Gen_36:11; for the name of the third, Zephi, is only a by-form of Zepho, as in 1Ch_1:40 a Shephi appears in place of the Shepho, Gen_36:23; comp. the Crit. Remark. But if the names Timnah and Amalek are annexed, apparently as sons of Eliphaz, this is probably a similar breviloquence to that in 1Ch_1:4; 1Ch_1:17; the author presumes it sufficiently known to his readers, that Timnah, Amalek’s mother, was not a son, but rather a concubine of Eliphaz (another wife besides Adah, the mother of those five sons first named); comp. Gen_36:12. So have the Sept. (in the cod. Alex.) and numerous older Jewish and Christian expositors solved the difficulty, and of the moderns, J. H. Michaelis, Starke, Keil, etc.; whereas Bertheau, having regard to 1Ch_1:39; 1Ch_1:51, where actually a separate stem and then a stem-prince Timnah are counted, prefers to assume that “the Chronist, interpreting the genealogical language, and perceiving in the family names the stem-relations that lie at their root, has explained the statements of Genesis concerning Timnah, so that by them the connection of two stems Timnah and Amalek with the other stems of Eliphaz shall be indicated, and they are accordingly counted in the same line with these stems as sons of Eliphaz.” This assumption seems to us too artificial, and ascribes to the Chronist a higher degree of bold independence and wilfulness in his operations than is admissible or consistent with his evident piety and conscientiousness in recording the facts of primeval history that were handed down to him.
1Ch_1:37. Sons of Reuel. These are entered four in number, exactly as in Gen_36:13. There are thus in all 10 grandsons (6 sons of Eliphaz and 4 of Reuel) who are assigned by our author to Esau, and who, with the three sons of Jeush, Jalam, and Korah (sons of Oholibamah), form the 13 family or stem chiefs (φύλαρχοι, Sept. Gen_36:15) of the Edomites. Against Bertheau, who would here make out a 12 from the 13 families, by reducing Amalek, 1Ch_1:36, to a secondary place, comp. Keil, p. 1Chr 36: “Neither Chronicles nor Genesis knows 12 tribes of Edom, but both books give 13 grandsons (rather descendants) of Esau; and these 13 grandsons are, by the report of Genesis, the 13 phylarchs of Edom which are distributed among the 3 wives of Esau, so that the 13 families may be reduced to 3 stems. And in Genesis, Amalek is not placed in a looser connection with the remaining tribes, but on the contrary, is not only, 1Ch_1:12, counted with the sons of Adah, perhaps because Timnah stood to Adah, the wife of Esau, in the same relation as Hagar to Sarah, but also in 1Ch_1:16 is reckoned to the dukes of the sons of Eliphaz. Thus Genesis counts not 5, but 6 stems of Eliphaz; and Chronicles has not fully effaced the number 12, as Bertheau further asserts, but the 13 sons and grandsons of Esau, who became phylarchs, are fully entered, and only their designation as אַלּוּפֵי בְנֵי עֵשָׂו left out, because unnecessary for the genealogy of the descendants of Esau.”
1Ch_1:38-42. The 7 sons of Seir and their descendants, or the (mingled since Esau’s invasion with his descendants) Seirite or Horite aborigines of Idumæa according to their tribes. These aborigines of the mountains of Edom, though not of Abrahamic descent, yet, from their gradually formed connection and intermingling with the descendants of Esau, are so reckoned as if they belonged to the Edomite family of nations. And this occurs not only here in Chronicles, where they are introduced as בְּנֵי שֵׂעִיר, but also in Gen_30:20-30, where they are called חֹרִי, “dwellers in caves, Troglodytes.” Comp. also on these Horites, our exp. of the book of Job, vol. 10. of the Bibelw. p. 238.—The names of the seven sons of Seir, that is, the seven Seirite chiefs, agree exactly with Genesis; and likewise their descendants, in number 18 men and 1 woman, Timnah, 1Ch_1:39. Only Oholibamah, a second Seiritess named in Gen_36:25, has been passed over by the Chronist, according to his wont in general to reckon only male members in his genealogical lists. On the deviations of some forms from the text of Genesis, as Homam, 1Ch_1:39, for Hemam; Aljan, 1Ch_1:40, for Alwan, etc., see Crit. Note.—The total names enumerated from Abraham amount to about 70, whether the two Timnahs, the mother of Amalek, 1Ch_1:36, and the sister of Lotan, 1Ch_1:39, or the Edomite and the Seirite Timnah be included, in which case there are exactly 70, or both or one of them be excluded from the number, and so then be only 68 or 69. Bertheau (whom Kamphausen, in Bunsen’s Bibelw., follows), counting in the former way, finds 12 descendants of Esau, 13 of Keturah, 2 of Isaac, 16 of Esau, and 27 of Seir, and so obtains the number 70; Keil, in the latter way, regards the Seirite Timnah as only mentioned by the way, and therefore excluded, and consequently reckons only 26 descendants of Seir, and in all, only 69 descendants of Abraham. Though the latter be right in many of his objections to Bertheau’s mode of reckoning (for instance, its exclusion of Ishmael, and inclusion of Esau and Israel), yet he certainly goes too far when he utterly denies the design of the Chronist to follow up his list of 70 descendants of Noah with the same number of those of Abraham. This design, though not carried out with mathematical exactness, and therefore not expressly mentioned here (any more than in 1Ch_1:5 ff.), appears in fact to have had a distinct influence on the selection and arrangement of his genealogical lists. The incidental agreement of the number in 1Ch_1:29-42 with that in 1Ch_1:5-23 shows this, just as the decade of the patriarchs between Noah and Abraham, in its agreement with that of the patriarchs before Noah (comp. 1Ch_1:24-27 with 1Ch_1:1-4), points to design.
Appendix.—The Edomite Kings and Chiefs till the beginning of Kingdom of Israel: 1Ch_1:43-54
1. The Kings: 1Ch_1:43-51 a.—A nearly literal repetition from Gen_36:31-39; only the words וַיִּמְלֹךְ בֶּֽאֱדֹם (1Ch_1:43) before בֶּלַע, and in 1Ch_1:51 after בַּעַל חָנָן, the words בֶּן־עַכְבּוֹר are left out, which, however, many Mss. here also supply. On the variants in Ajuth, 1Ch_1:46, and in Hadad and Pai, 1Ch_1:50, see Crit. Notes.
1Ch_1:51. And Hadad died. This statement (וַיָּמָת חֲדַד) is wanting in the parallel texts of Genesis, where, after entering Hadad (or rather Hadar) as the last king, the formula וְאֵלֶּה שְׁמוֹת serves to introduce the then following list of the phylarchs and their seats. By the sentence “and Hadad died,” along with the following, “and there were” (וַיִּהְיוּ), this list of phylarchs is here brought into a far closer connection with the foregoing register of kings than in Genesis,—into a connection, indeed, which at first sight looks as if the Chronist intended to represent the dukes as successors of the kingdom terminated by Hadad’s death, and so report a transition from the monarchic to the aristocratic form of government in Edom. This supposition, however, which Bertheau, Kamph., and others defend, is not absolutely necessary; the ו consec. in וַיִּהְיוּ “may express merely the order of thought; that is, may connect the mention of the dukes only in thought with the enumeration of the kings, or intimate that besides the kings there were also dukes, who could govern the nation and country” (Keil). The latter supposition is the more probable, as the following list is owing to a statistical and chronographic rather than a genealogical tendency, as will presently be shown.
2. The Dukes: 1Ch_1:51-54.—This list agrees in the order and form of the 11 names given exactly (on the variant Aljah for Alwah, 1Ch_1:51, see Crit. Note) with Gen_36:40-43. Yet it has received from the Chronist another superscription and subscription, of which the former runs thus: “and there were the dukes of Edom” (אַלּוּפֵי אֱדוֹם instead of א׳ עֵשָׂו, Gen_36:40, the name of the people and land taking the place of the n. propr. of the patriarch), and the latter: “these are the dukes of Edom” (for which that of Genesis is more circumstantial: “These are the dukes of Edom according to their habitations in the land of their possessions: this is Esau, the father of Edom”). And the list treats not so much of the enumeration of certain persons as of that of the seats of certain (perhaps hereditary) dukes of the nation or phylarchs, according to which they are briefly named, “the duke of Timnah,” etc. The list has thus a geographical, not a genealogical import; it is a list of neighbouring principalities of Edom, not of Edomite princes. The number eleven of these principalities forms an approximative parallel with the number twelve of the tribes of Israel; it agrees also nearly with the number of the descendants of Esau above named (1Ch_1:36 ff.): but it could only by violent means and arbitrary hypotheses be made to agree with this number, or reduced to the number twelve (comp. the remarks against Berth. on 1Ch_1:37).
Footnotes:
[1] דִּיפַת is certainly an error of the pen for ריפת, Gen_10:3, which is found here in many mss. and editions, as well as in the Sept. and the Vulg.
[2] רוֹדָנִים appears to be an error of the pen or an arbitrary amendment for דֹּדָנִים, Gen_10:4, which many mss. and older editions present here also. But comp. the exposition.
[3]So (לוּדִים) the Keri in our passage, which, however, may rest on a confirmation with Gen_10:13. The Kethib has לוּדִיִּים, a long plural form, which is to לוּדִים as in English Lydian would be to Lydian, or as in Hebrew כֻּשִׁיִּים, Amo_9:12, to כּוּשִׁים, 2Ch_21:6.
[4]On מֶשֶׁךְ instead of מַשׁ, Gen_10:23, see the Commentary.
[5]Instead of Aljan (עַלְיָן) many mss. have Alvan (עַלְוָן), in accordance with Gen_36:23.
[6]For שְׁפִי some mss. have שְׁפוֹ, as in Gen_36:23. So in 1Ch_1:36, where the name צְפִי is in a number of mss. changed into צְפוֹ, as in Gen_36:11.
[7]For חַמְרָן a considerable number of mss. have חֶמְדָּן, as in Gen_36:26.
[8]For the Kethib עָיּוּת the Keri has עֲוִית, as in Gen_36:35.
[9]For הֲדַד some mss. read הֲדַר, which is the usual reading in Gen_36:39, while there also several mss. present הדד. Hadad’s city פָּעִי, which, in the same parallel, is פָּעוּ, some good codices here also change into פָּעוּ.
[10]For עַלְיָה the Keri gives עַלְוָה, according to Gen_36:40.
[11]Comp. also Wellhausen, De gentibus et fam. judæis, etc., p.4, where with respect to the genealogical lists in the beginning of Chronicles, it, is well remarked: Quo fit. ut cæmeterii quasi speciem nobis præbeant hæc capita cipporum pleni: fuit ætas, cui breves suffecere tituli ad resuscitandam sepultorum memoriam;—interjectis sæculis, nedum millenniis, leguntur tituli, sed quo referantur, quid sibi velint, nescitur.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On v4 Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth--The three sons of this…
Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth--The three sons of this patriarch are enumerated, partly because they were the founders of the new world, and partly because the fulfilment of Noah's prophecy (Gen 9:25-27) could not otherwise appear to have been verified.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. Sheth, Enosh] “Seth, Enos,” the spellings given in…
1. Sheth, Enosh] “Seth, Enos,” the spellings given in Gen. (A.V.) are less correct. Generally speaking the forms of names in Genesis (A.V.) are derived from the Latin Vulgate, which in turn took them from the LXX., which again (owing to the shortcomings of the Greek alphabet as compared with the Hebrew) did not reproduce the Hebrew forms accurately.
Ch. 1. The Genealogies of the Peoples
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1–4. A Genealogy from Adam to the Sons of Noah
The history proper does not begin till the death of Saul, but the historian acts in accordance with Eastern custom in connecting his history with the remote past by means of genealogies.
This first genealogy is taken from Gen_5:3-32. The extremely concise form in which it is given is instructive as shewing how far the Chronicler could go in abbreviating his authorities.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 4 (1) Adam (man) is here treated as a proper…
(1) Adam (man) is here treated as a proper name; in Gen_5:1-5 it is an appellative.
The Chaldeans also had a tradition of ten antediluvian patriarchs or kings, beginning with Alorus and ending with Xisuthrus (Hasis-Adra), the hero of the Flood. They made the duration of this first period of human history 432,000 years. Remembering that Abraham, the Hebrew, was from “Ur (Uru, the city) of the Chaldees,” we can hardly suppose the two accounts to be independent of each other. The comparative simplicity and, above all, the decided monotheism of the Hebrew relation, give a high probability to the assumption that it represents a more original form of the tradition.
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Sheth, Enosh.—Those who have imagined the present list to be a mere duplicate of that given in Gen_4:17 sqq., and who explain the whole by the fatally easy process of resolving all these different names into a capricious repetition of one original solar figure, are obliged to admit a difficulty in connection with the names of Sheth and Enosh, which are acknowledged “not to belong to mythology at all” (Prof. Goldziher). Considering that most Hebrew names have a distinct and intentional significance, it is obviously a mere exercise of ingenuity to invest them with a mythological character. Meanwhile, such speculations cannot possibly be verified.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Vers. 1-4. A. LIST OF GENERATIONS FROM ADAM TO…
Vers. 1-4. A. LIST OF GENERATIONS FROM ADAM TO NOAH. These verses contain a line of genealogical descents, ten in number, from Adam to Noah, adding mention of the three sons of the latter. The stride from Adam to Seth, and the genealogy"s entire obliviousness of Cain and Abel, are full of suggestion. All of these thirteen names in the Hebrew and in the Septuagint Version, though not those in the Authorized Version, are facsimiles of those which occur in Genesis 5. They are not accompanied, however, here, as they are there, by any chronological attempt. Probably the main reason of this is that any references of the kind were quite beside the objects which the compiler of this work had in view. It is, however, possible that other reasons for this chronological silence may have existed. The uncertainities attaching to the chronology found in Genesis, as regards this table, may have been suspected or evident uncertainties which afterwards proclaim themselves so loudly in the differences observable between the Hebrew, Samaritan, and Septuagint versions. Thus the Hebrew text exhibits the total aggregate of years from Adam to the birth of Noah, as amounting to one thousand and fifty-six; the Samaritan version to seven hundred and seven only; and the Septuagint to as many as sixteen hundred and sixty-two; nevertheless, all three agree in adding five hundred years onward to the birth of Shem, and another hundred years to the coming of the Flood. It must be remarked of this first genealogical table, whether occurring here or in Genesis, that, notwithstanding its finished appearance, notwithstanding the impression it undoubtedly first makes on the reader, that it purports to give all the intervening generations from the first to Shem, it may not be so; nor be intended to convey that impression. It is held by some that names are omitted, and with them of course the years which belonged to them. There can be no doubt that this theory would go far to remove several great difficulties, and that some analogies might be invoked in support of it, from the important genealogies of the New Testament. The altogether abrupt opening of this book a succession of proper names without any verb or predication cannot be considered as even partially compensated by the first sentence of ch. 9., "So all Israel were reckoned by genealogies; and behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah." This verse applies directly to the genealogies of Israel and the tribes, beginning ch. 2:1, while under any circumstances, we must look on the first portion of this book as a series of tables, here and there slightly annotated, and suddenly suspended before the eyes.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
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1 Chronicles
On the whole book Chronicles.
It has pleased God that a large part of Old Testament Scripture should take the form of history. The sacred books of the Hebrews consist largely of a record of the national life. Here we read of the birth and growth of the chosen people, their prosperity, their conquests, their defeats and captivities, their lawgivers, priests, prophets, kings, and patriots. This Book of Chronicles contains the genealogies of Hebrew tribes and families, and the annals of the nation during the long and glorious reign of David. There must be reasons why the volume which contains the revelation of the Divine character and will should, in so many parts, assume the historical form.
I There is A GENERAL RELIGIOUS PURPOSE answered by history. Man is social, and is appointed by Providence to live in families, tribes, and nations. Religion not only summons the individual to live a life of allegiance and submission to the unseen power of righteousness and grace, but requires men in their political relations to abide beneath the guiding eye of the Eternal.
1. Historical records promote national life.
2. They encourage a sense of national unity and responsibility. "Not only,"says a great writer, "does the nobleness of a nation depend on the presence of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each individual citizen." The same writer adduces the Jews as an illustration of this principle.
3. They furnish us with practical political lessons. Bossuet has admirably shown of what service history must needs be to princes and rulers.
4. They represent good and evil principles in living instances.
5. To the devout mind they are full of indications of the presence and theenergy of God, the moral Ruler and Lord of all.
II There is a SPECIAL RELIGIOUS USE in Jewish history.
1. It is the history of a very remarkable and favoured we should saychosen people.
2. it records direct interpositions of the hand of God. In the obligation to obedience and service, in the chastisement of lawlessness and rebellion, the Christian can trace a Divine power, whatever race or nation he reviews in the pages of history or contemplates with an observant eye. The peculiarity of the Israelitish chronicles lies here the Divine power is acknowledged from page to page.
3. The history of the Jews is an epitome of the history of mankind. Withinthat little territory of Palestine there lived a microcosm of humanity. The parallel is ever presenting itself to our vision.
4. The record of Israel is the story of the preparation for the advent ofChristianity. The Old Testament points on to the New. This Book of Chronicles, in its biography of David, leads the mind on to him who was David"s Son and David"s Lord.
APPLICATION.
1. This book should be read with interest as presenting an especiallyLevitical view of Hebrew history.
2. The reader should be on the watch for gleams of light amidst the sombre catalogues of Israelitish names.
(3) Sympathy should be elicited by the presentation of the Divine side of both biography and history. T.
1Ch 1-9
On the first nine chapters Genealogies.
Most readers of the Scriptures shrink from perusing the lengthy genealogical tables which constitute so large a part of the Books of Numbers and of Chronicles. It is difficult to feel any interest in persons of whom we know nothing but the name. The lists of Hebrew names constitute dry and unattractive reading. Yet, as every man amongst ourselves who has a distinguished pedigree takes pleasure in tracing his own descent by means of "the family tree" which he has in his possession, so it is reasonable to suppose that the Jews regarded their recorded genealogies with pleasure and pride. There are, however, reasons why we also should contemplate these family records with interest.
I There are GENERAL REASONS why genealogies should be recorded and preserved.
1. Family life is ordained by God. Revelation teaches us that the family is aDivine institution, and society can only prosper and retain stability when fixed upon this basis.
2. Family feeling is consequently natural and Divine. The relationships ofthe household are bound up with deep, tender, and beneficial sentiments.
3. Family recollections and records are of human interest and moraladvantage. When the father tells the story of his boyhood to his son, the grandfather to his grandson, there is a natural interest felt, and a wholesome feeling of family life and community developed.
4. In many instances family history is an important part of national history.The story of the reigning family in a monarchical country, and of families distinguished for hereditary ability and patriotism in all countries, can scarcely be omitted from the chronicles of a nation.
5. The federal family feeling is contributive to the religious life. "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.
II There are SPECIAL REASONS why the genealogies of the Jews should be preserved. The fact that they have been thought worthy of so prominent a place in the canonical Scriptures is indicative of their importance to the national and religious life of the Hebrew people.
1. In some instances these genealogies evince the faithfulness of God in thefulfilment of prophecy. This is especially the case with regard to the character and functions of the several tribes of Israel.
2. In some instances these tables indicate the functions of families in thenation and in the service of the sanctuary. Thus the tribe of Judah is pointed out as the monarchical, the tribe of Levi as the ministerial tribe, and the family of Aaron as the priestly family.
3. One especial purpose of Hebrew genealogy was to provide that thedescent of the Messiah should be duly traced, and that the predictions of Scripture should be thus obviously fulfilled. The genealogies of the Evangelists should be read in connection with those of the books of the Old Testament. The Son of David, the descendant of Abraham, is thus shown to be the Son of God and the Saviour of mankind. T.
HOMILIES BY R. GLOVER
1Ch 1-6
On the genealogical tables of the first six chapters of the First Book of Chronicles.
It is worth while to read these long lists of names. It is like standing on a river-bank and watching the flow of time. Solemn thoughts of transiency of life, of fame, of importance, are suggested by them. Solemn thoughts of responsibility are started by them, and appeals to act worthily of the past rise from them. They deepen our respect for our grand old world, the nurse of heroes and of saints
Where half the soil has trod the rest In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages.
They reconcile us, to some extent, to inevitable evils in the present, showing that wars and conflicts have been the order of the day from the beginning. Observe more particularly
I How broadly the writer of this book lays THE BASIS OF HUMAN BROTHERHOOD, He is intensely devoted to the Jewish priesthood almost certainly one of them. Some, therefore, would expect only narrowness from him. Priest, presbyter, or pastor are all supposed to have more contracted views than neighbours. But he commences his genealogies, not with Moses, nor Jacob, nor Abraham, but with Adam; recognizing at the outset that mankind is of one blood, one essential nature, one need, one capacity. This is one of the grand differences between the Bible religion and all other ancient religions. It recognized a common brotherhood of mankind beneath the common fatherhood of God. Let us learn this lesson, and go back a little further than the Commonwealth or the Conquest, and remember the English race is not made of different clay from the rest of mankind. All had the same origin, and all, therefore, are capable of the same elevation.
II Observe, secondly, IT BECOMES US TO RECOGNIZE OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO THE PAST. No Jew could read these records without feeling it. If possessing fertile land, they owed it to others to the Simeonites, five hundred, who occupied Mount Seir 1Ch_4:39-43 to the men of Reuben, extirpating Arab tribes and dwelling in their place for centuries; to Caleb, for possessing Hebron; to Machir and to Jair, and to many such. If enjoying the arts of life, they should remember how much of these were inherited. They would recall with advantage "Joab, the father of the valley of craftsmen" 1Ch_4:14 those who "wrought fine linen of the house of Ashbea" (ver. 21); and "the potters" and "those that dwelt among plants and hedges" (ver. 23). If they rejoice in their exquisite poetry, and their music probably matching it in worth, they should remember David and Heman, (1Ch_6:33) Asaph (ver. 39), and Merari (ver. 44). It is well to remember the debt we owe to the past. Science did not begin in the nineteenth century, nor good laws, nor philanthropy, nor even statesmanship. We stand on the shoulders of the past. Some are too confident and presumptuous, as if what we possess had been achieved and not inherited. See that we do something for posterity, and transmit in finer volume the advantages we have enjoyed.
III Observe THE LONG BLESSING THAT FOLLOWS THE GODLY, The priestly line of Aaron is traced through a thousand years of eminence down to the time of the Captivity, and then it is still strong. The royal line of David is traced down to the Captivity, the crown resting on some member of his family through seventeen generations, and traced subsequently in the eminence of Zerubbabel, who is one of the leaders of the return. Blessing of long lines of progeny, inheriting parents" success, are seen in many other cases, e.g. Caleb"s. A grandson of the prophet Samuel (Heman) inherits his poetic fire. Evil extends its traces and its curse to the third or fourth generation of those that hate God; good carries its blessing to "thousands of generations" of those that love him. Do right and do good, and none can limit your power of blessing your fellow-men. Yet observe, lastly
IV THE PROMISE OF THE START IS SOMETIMES BROKEN, AND THE UNPROMISING BEGINNING TURNS OUT WELL. Some of Aaron"s sons (Nadab and Abihu) have an awful fate; some of Judah"s an unhappy character. But sometimes a family, beginning badly, improves; for example, here is Judah"s, who in the course of a few generations had in it Er, Onan, and Achan ("the troubler of Israel"); yet it runs itself clear, and gets better, purer, and stronger as it goes on. Therefore despair of none, nor of yourself. Heart within and God overhead, whatever you have been, you may become a blessing to great multitudes. G.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK
Ver. 1, etc.
The mission of Scripture genealogies.
Since "all Scripture is profitable," etc. , (2Ti_3:16, 2Ti_3:17) we may inquire what is the purpose of the many genealogical records that are preserved for us, and how they stand related to the higher spiritual objects of the Divine revelation. It appears that genealogies have always possessed a peculiar attraction for Orientals; and still nothing so quickly seizes their attention, or pleases them so much, as a summary or review of their histories. The genealogies of Scripture, therefore, help to give naturalness and the sense of genuineness to it as entirely an Eastern composition. It would be made a plea against the authenticity if such genealogies were not found in it. Sufficient reason for the lists which commence the Books of Chronicles may be found in the date and circumstances of their composition. Whoever was the editor, we are sure that the work was prepared after the return from captivity and subsequent to the building of Zerubbabel"s temple. The condition of the people called for such a review of the national history as would impress upon them their connection with a long and glorious past, and would freshen to their view the great principles on which the national prosperity had rested. "The people had not yet gathered up the threads of the old national life, broken by the Captivity. They required to be reminded, in the first place, of their entire history, of the whole past course of mundane events, and of the position which they themselves held among the nations of the earth. This was done, curtly and drily, but sufficiently, by means of genealogies." Such a picture of the past revived hope and encouraged high aspirations for the future. Such a summary became a virtual introduction to the Gospels, and these genealogies may be compared with those found in St. Matthew and St. Luke. But beyond the use of "genealogies" to Orientals generally, and to the returned captives of that age in particular, we inquire what comprehensive truths for the race, and so for us, they may be designed to impress. And we may fix attention on three:
(1) the unity of God;
(2) the unity of the race;
(3) the unity of the Divine dealings with the race.
I THE UNITY OF GOD. This was the first and essential truth committed to the trust of the Abrahamic race. This they were to conserve for the world during the long ages of man"s "free experiment." It was opposed by the dualism of Persia, and the more common polytheism, which associated "gods" with particular localities and countries. It is significant that after the Captivity the Israelites never relapsed into idolatry; but such a genealogy as this helped them to realize fully that the God of their restoration was the "one God" of their fathers, and the God of the whole earth, who could not be limited in thought to any locality, nation, or name. Illustrate and enforce the jealousy of the Divine unity, and the position of this truth, as the very foundation of the Christian doctrine. There may be no question on this point; we, and all the generations that have ever lived, have to do with one God, the same, the only Lord God Almighty. If we are at peace with him, then we have none else to fear. "If God be for us, who can be against us?
II THE UNITY OF THE RACE. All mankind, from the great first parent, Adam, are gathered together in the genealogy as one race. Thus is resisted the tendency of some nations to a pride of superiority over others, as though they were of another origin and kind; and the disposition of Israel to exclusiveness as a people specially favoured by God. God made all; (Act_17:26) God cares for all that he has made. And any apparently special dealings with one race are designed for the good of the whole. In these modern times attention is being freshly given to what is called the "solidarity" of the race, and that fact is assumed to explain much that seems mysterious. But this is precisely the impression which Scripture designs to produce by its genealogies: with this further moral aim, that thus it confirms the claims of the great human brotherhood.
III THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE DEALINGS WITH THE RACE. This is the chief impression made by a review of the world"s past history. It may be illustrated in relation to
(1) the orderings of Divine providence;
(2) the requirements of Divine Law;
(3) the judgments of Divine wrath;
(4) the signs of a Divine plan; and
(5) the fulfilment of Divine promise.
We may firmly stay our hearts upon the world"s experience of the unity of God"s dealings. He is the Lord; he changes not: "His years are throughout all generations." This conviction concerning God is the basis of social order , of earthly governments, of the redemptive scheme, and of mans ideal of righteousness. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" These genealogies also stand in special relation to the promise of Messiah, the Saviour. They show a Divine purpose being wrought through all the ages, and reveal it accomplished at last in the Child of the Virgin Mary. But they teach that the dominion of this Messiah is wide as the race, and long as the ages. It is to be universal and everlasting. As a practical conclusion, it may be shown that the depressing influence exerted on us by the brevity of human life, and by the uprising and falling of dynasties and nations, is corrected by this revelation in the genealogies of the "Faithful One," "whose years are throughout all generations;" and who so solemnly declares, "All souls are mine. R.T.
Vers. 1-4.
The two great race-heads.
It is a significant thing that Scripture so distinctly affirms a double beginning for the human race, and sets before us two great human fathers. It is usual to speak of our "father Adam," but it would be at least as truthful to speak of our "father Noah." The period from Adam to Noah is given us very briefly, and it is scarcely more than a record of names. The one fact that comes out so prominently is that the first descendants of Adam lived lives that were so prolonged as to be almost inconceivable to us. And it is equally evident that the new race born of Noah was a race of short-livers, their allotted time on earth not being greatly in excess of our own. Here are facts so important as to be a fitting subject for consideration.
I THE HEAD OF THE LONG-LIVERS. Adam was himself a long-lived man. We know that physical death was not the judgment on his sin, though the embittering of death by a smiting conscience, and by the sufferings of disease engendered by sin, undoubtedly was. How long men"s earthly lives might have been if they had preserved the purity of Eden, we may only imagine, but some hint of it is given in the experiment God made of permitting even the banished ones to live for a thousand years. Can we conceive the Divine thought in permitting for a time these prolonged lives?
1. The earth was to be won by the human race; its stores were to bediscovered, and their uses shown. This beginning of the arts of civilized life would make more rapid progress if one man could carry his experience over several generations, getting full time for the outworking of his thoughts and plans. We know too often now how sadly invention and discovery are stopped by the early death of the workers.
2. It might be expected that man would have a fuller and fairer moral trial ifhis time on earth were thus prolonged, and it might reasonably be hoped that the continuous experience of God"s goodness would lead him to repentance and restored relations with God. This expectation, however, was not fulfilled, but man"s self-will took advantage of the security of life, and grew into an awful majesty and pride of power, that necessitated the Divine interference in an overwhelming judgment. And it became declared for all the ages that too prolonged life is not the best thing for sinful and self-willed human creatures. It is a trust too great. It is better for man"s highest welfare that upon him should constantly rest the sense of the
brevity of life. He only perverted to his uttermost ruin the longer trust. So Adam is the father of a race that is passed and done with. We are not his children in the sense of being placed under the same time-conditions.
II THE HEAD OF THE SHORT-LIVERS. This is the first and chief distinction between the races before and after the Flood. Noah had a cleansed earth to possess, but he carried over into it some relics of the older evil in his family, and so commenced the new trial under disability. Before, the race had kept in one stream; under the new condition it divided into three great streams, represented by Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and it is found by scholars now that this is stilt the substantial division of the human race. But everywhere we find the condition of the shortened life. "Brief life is here our portion." And this is made one of the most important influences in the moral training of mankind. Show how it fills each day with importance; prevents any man reaching extreme degrees of crime; solemnizes with the shadow of coming judgment, etc. Now, he only "liveth long who liveth well;" and we need to pray with Moses, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Impress the duty of seeking at once salvation, and at once to be found faithful, in view of the brevity of our life. Compare Jacob"s confession, "Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been," etc. R.T.
HOMILIES BY F. WHITFIELD Chapters 1. and 2.
Genealogies.
In the meaning of genealogical names as translated from the original, volumes of spiritual truth lie hid. In the present day names are arbitrarily given, generally because they belong to some member of the family; indeed, in most cases, for no other reason. With the Jews it was different. It was because of some feature in the parents character or some of his family, or because of some future relation to prophecy, or because of some calling to which the child was to be trained. Jacob, Samuel, Solomon, and many others are instances of this fact; hence from these names much information may be gathered as to their spiritual and natural life. The inner history of families is recorded, revealing the spiritual and natural life of each which ordinary history could but imperfectly bring to light. The profession or calling of the individual or the family, or the Lord"s special dealings with it, or some event in life with all its results, these are the origin of most of these names, and bring to light a hidden history. A great writer has said that Shakespeare opens out to us much of the inner history and character of the day in which he lived the manners and customs, the thoughts, habits, and feelings which ordinary history never could write.
This illustrates the great importance to the Christian student of studying these genealogies of the Old Testament, so generally, if not altogether, overlooked. And what is the spiritual lesson we may learn from this portion of our subject? That just as these names are the embodiment of spiritual truths and principles of life, and replete with eventful realities, so should it be in each of our lives. Nothing should be meaningless. Spiritual truth should permeate the smallest and meanest duties. There is a history in even the smallest action. There is no such thing as a trifle. Let us stamp everything with that which will survive us; with that which will speak, to generations yet unborn, of truth and righteousness and God; so that as they read our history they may gather from it what we gather from these names great principles, which may animate and encourage them, and thus"make our lives sublime," thus live so as to be missed, that it may be said of us, "He being dead yet speaketh." But what was it made "the fathers" put Divine meanings into their names? It was that God was to them a reality; that everything connected with him had for them a deep and solemn meaning. This so impressed the mind and heart that it found its expression in their names and in the smallest events of their every-day life. Thus must God be to us if there is to be the impress of Divine and imperishable memorials in our history. Not only the language of a nation, but its spiritual life, is written in its names and words. Read in this light, what meaning is thrown into these dry genealogical trees of the Old Testament! How replete with spiritual instruction to the Bible student! W.
Chapters 1. and 2.
The genealogies in relation to Christ.
It will be seen that many of the names in these genealogies have "El" or "Jah" as a prefix or termination the former God as Creator, the latter God in covenant or as Redeemer. Thus each individual bearing this Divine name is seen in direct personal relation to God in these aspects of his character. But the most important consideration in these genealogies is that they contain that of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can trace the thread through all the names till we reach the holy family. It runs like a vein of silver through generations and families, many of whom, despite the holy meaning of their names, bring up a history of shame and sorrow. This doubtless is the reason why they are so faithfully recorded. They are all here to continue the genealogy of Christ to lead up eventually to him. He is the fruit of every genealogical tree. We see the seed, the blade, the blossom, the flower, and at last we have the fruit Jehovah Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, as he appeared among men. All that is repulsive or flagrant in the genealogical tree only serves to bring into more striking contrast the fruit that grows out of it. The summer fruit has sprung out of the corrupt ground, and has had to contend on every side with elements at war with its very existence. Sometimes these genealogies, in the very order of their record in the sacred volume, contain within themselves a prophecy pointing to him. An instance of this in illustration may be found in Genesis 5., the leading names in which, when translated in the order there recorded, contain the beautiful prophecy, "The blessed God shall come down teaching, and his light shall give life and consolation to men." Sometimes names of this kind foreshadow some special aspect of Christ"s work. We have the names of El-kanah, Abi-jah, Mori-jah or Moriah. This last-named is the mount on which Isaac, the type of Christ, was offered, and on this mount Solomon"s temple was built. "Mor" signifies "bitterness," "Jah" means Jehovah. " Thus the temple is built on the bitterness," or sufferings, of Jehovah. So also the spiritual temple is founded upon the cross of Christ. The genealogical tree of Christ runs through the names in these chapters. There are several truths forced upon our notice as we think of this. First, grace is not hereditary. In the lineal descent of the Lord Jesus we find idolaters and slaves. We see it every day. Manasseh is son to Hezekiah, Josiah is the son of Amen. It is still true, and will ever be so. They who are of the family of God are "born not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Secondly, as Jesus Christ came through all sorts of people, so he came to save and bless all sorts of people saints and sinners, bond and free, rich and poor. He took the humanityof each without sin, that he might bless them. "This man eateth and drinketh with publicans and sinners." Though on his throne of glory, these he still calls and loves to gather round him. Lord Macaulay tells us of a celebrated artist who made a beautiful piece of statuary which was the admiration of Europe. But he had a poor boy who was his apprentice. He gathered up the broken fragments that fell from the master"s hand, and with these he made a work which eclipsed his master"s, so that the latter died of a broken heart. Jesus Christ, the despised and rejected carpenter"s Son, has stooped down to our fallen world and gathered up the fragments of our fallen humanity, and is forming them into a kingdom which shall eclipse in grandeur and glory every other. W.
Chapters 1. and 2.
The genealogies in relation to the Church and the world.
Looking over these chapters, we find prominent mention of "families" and "sons." These are the two words which, constantly used, are replete with meaning. The sons form the families. How important to family life oat of which all that is great and good has issued, that the "sons" who bear the names of "El" and "Jah" should be nurtured and trained to a life worthy of those high and holy names! Where this is not the case, there is the real breach of the third commandment. The Name of the Lord God has been "taken in vain." Our "families" will be what the "sons" make them, and our Churches and the world will ever be what the "family" is. Family training in the fear of God will send forth messengers that will be the brightness of the Church and the blessing of the world. All real degeneracy in one and the other will ever be traceable to the "family," and ultimately to the "sons." Mothers, think of this! It all, under God, is in your hands. And as we saw in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus that he passed through all sorts of people, so we see it here in his people. Here we find Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, all honoured names, mingled with names worthless and infamous. It is for the same reason, to show that grace is not hereditary. In the first two verses of the second chapter we have the names of the family of Israel. The sons of Israel are mentioned in their order of natural birthright. But immediately in the same chapter, in the family enumeration, this order is set aside, and instead of beginning with Reuben, according to the natural order, the record begins with Judah. Thus grace is set in the forefront, and nature put into the background. The Bible is not the record of nature, but of grace. The history of one little tribe, occupying a strip of land not larger than Wales, fills the entire pages of the Old Testament, while huge empires are passed over in silence. This is in accordance with the character of the Book. The history of this little tribe fills its pages because it is the history of the kingdom of God. Its design was to manifest Christ. Apart from him the Word does not acknowledge history in any sense. Neither a nation nor an individual has any history before God, except as connected with him. Hence Assyria and Babylon are comparatively overlooked, and all record is centred in Jerusalem. Hence Sennacherib is barely mentioned, while whole chapters are filled with Abraham and Moses and Joseph. Hence Reuben is put into the background and Judah into the forefront. This prominence given to Judah over Reuben was because the right and privileges of primogeniture had been given to him, and because from his tribe Christ was to spring. Thus in the very foreground of this book Christ is placed. Judah is also shown to have pre-eminence simply because of Christ. It is so now. Christ must be first; he is the Alpha and Omega. The opening chapter of every history, every event, every duty, every pleasure, should be him. If he be not in the forefront of each one and the centre round which everything converges, there is no history there worthy of the name; there is no record there before God, however great it may be before men. There is no name in heaven without this, though it may be emblazoned on the marble tablets of the world for ever. But only Christ is true. There is a blot on every escutcheon but his. Scarcely is Judah"s pre-eminence brought before us ere we see the dark picture of sin in it. Er and Achan stand out pre-eminently as blots on Judah"s fair fame. Yes, on the very lineage of the Messiah himself there is written, as with a sunbeam, "Cease ye from man." Lust and murder are the dark lines drawn by the Holy Spirit on the beautiful picture. Only the Spirit of God can make a Christian. And the man may put on all the garments of a Christian the knowledge of truth, the doctrines of truth, the zeal for truth, the profession of truth in its holiest and purest form, and yet carry through life an unchanged heart, the very light which he possesses so dazzling him with its brightness as to keep him from seeing his terrible depravity and feeling his need of a Saviour. Reader, are you one of these? W.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-27.
Natural and spiritual paternity.
There may not be much that is positively instructive in these genealogies; yet there may be found that which is suggestive in them. They invite us to think of
I THE ADAMIC, OR NATURAL, FATHERHOOD. (Ver. 1.) It is a high distinction to be the progenitor of an illustrious "family" or of a powerful tribe; still more so of a whole nation; and the highest of its kind to be the father of the human race. But the honour is not without its serious qualifications.
1. It is of an inferior order. It is "after the flesh;" it pertains to the lowerkingdom; it does not stand in the first rank in the sight of Divine wisdom.
2. It involves shame as well as honour. If in his later days Adam couldboast of the happiness and triumphs which his descendants enjoyed, he
must have been covered with confusion as he witnessed the sorrow and the humiliation which they endured. By his fatherhood of our race be became the parent of guilt and shame as well as of virtue and honour. They who sigh for the honour and joy of parentage may well reflect that, if our first father could have foreseen the misery and degradation to which his sons and daughters would sink, he would (or might well) have shrunk from the high distinction he enjoyed.
II THE ABRAHAMIC, OR SPIRITUAL, FATHERHOOD. (Ver. 28.) It is true that Abraham, as his name suggests, was the father of a multitude, and that it was of him, as concerning the flesh, the Messiah came. But it is also true that our Master taught us to think of the Hebrew patriarch as the father of all faithful souls rather than as the mere progenitor of a people. The true children of Abraham are those who "do his works" (Joh_8:39) those who hear and heed the Word of God. Not they who are "the seed of Abraham" are the children of the promise, (Rom_9:8) but they who have the spirit of the believing and obedient patriarch; they who are Jews, "not outwardly, but inwardly, whose praise is not of men, but of God". (Rom_2:28, Rom_2:29) This is the paternity to which we should aspire, and to which we may attain. By
(1) cultivating a Christian character and spirit;
(2) living a blameless and beautiful life;
(3) speaking, in love and wisdom, enlightening and redeeming truth;
we may become parents of faithful souls: we may be the means of quickening to newness of life those who, in their turn, will lead others also into the way of life. We may thus generate sources of holy influence through which, in distant times, the erring shall be restored and the dead shall live. C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Adam, Sheth, Enosh.
1Ch_1:1-54
Adam, Sheth, Enosh.
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Israelite descent
Israel was Jehovahs chosen people, His son, to whom special privileges were guaranteed by solemn covenant. A mans claim to share in this covenant depended on his genuine Israelite descent, and the proof of such descent was an authentic genealogy. In these chapters the chronicler has taken infinite pains to collect pedigrees from all available sources and to construct a complete set of genealogies exhibiting the lines of descent of the families of Israel. These chapters, which seem to us so dry and useless, were probably regarded by the chroniclers contemporaries as the most important part of his work. The preservation or discovery of a genealogy was almost a matter of life and death (Ezr_2:61-63; Neh_7:63-65). (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
Names
The first nine chapters contain the largest extant collection of Hebrew names.
1. These names have an individual significance. A mere parish register is not in itself attractive, but if we consider even such a list, the very names interest us and kindle our imaginations. It is almost impossible to linger in a country churchyard, reading the half-effaced inscriptions upon the headstones, without forming some dim picture of the character and history and even the outward semblance of the men and women who once bore the names. A name implies the existence of a distinct personality. In its lists of what are now mere names the Bible seems to recognise the dignity and sacredness of bare human life.
2. These names have also a collective significance. They are typical and representative--the names of kings and priests and captains; they sum up the tribes of Israel, both as a Church and a nation, down all the generations of its history.
3. The meanings of names reveal the ideas of the people who used them. The Hebrew names bear important testimony to the peculiar vocation of this nation. No nation of antiquity has such a proportion of names of religious import. The Old Testament contains more than a hundred etymologies of personal names, most of which attach a religious meaning to the words explained.
4. How far do these names help us to understand the spiritual life of ancient Israel? The Israelites made constant use of El and Jehovah in their names, and we have no parallel practice. Were they then so much more religious than we are? Probably in a sense they were. Modern Englishman have developed a habit of almost complete reticence and reserve on religious matters, and this habit is illustrated by our choice of proper names.
5. According to the testimony of names, the Israelites favourite ideas about God were that He heard, and knew, and remembered; that He was gracious, and helped men and gave them gifts; they loved best to think of Him as God the Giver. This is a foreshadowing of the Christian doctrines of grace and of the Divine sovereignty. God hears and remembers and gives--what? All that we have to say to Him and all that we are capable of receiving from Him. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
The genealogies indicative of universal brotherhood
The existing races of the world are all traced back through Shem, Ham, and Japheth to Noah, and through him to Adam. The Israelites did not claim, like certain Greek clans, to be the descendants of a special god of their own, or, like the Athenians, to have sprung miraculously from sacred soft. Their genealogies testified that not merely Israelite nature, but human nature, is moulded on a Divine pattern. These apparently barren lists of names enshrine the great principles of the universal brotherhood of man and the universal Fatherhood of God. The opening chapters of Genesis and Chronicles are among the foundations of the catholicity of the Church of Christ. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
The genealogies and heredity
Each nation rightly regards its religious ideas and life and literature as a precious inheritance peculiarly its own; and it should not be too severely blamed for being ignorant that other nations have their inheritance also. Such considerations largely justify the interest in heredity shown by the chroniclers genealogies. On the positive practical side religion is largely a matter of heredity, and ought to be. The Christian sacrament of baptism is a continued profession of this truth: our children are clean; they are within the covenant of grace; we claim for them the privileges of the Church to which we belong. This was also part of the meaning of the genealogies. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
The genealogies: what we owe to the past
We are the creatures and debtors of the past, though we are slow to own our obligations. We have nothing that we have not received; but we are apt to consider ourselves self-made men, the architects and builders of our own fortunes, who have the right to be self-satisfied, self-assertive, and selfish. The heir of all the ages, in the full vigour of youth, takes his place in the foremost ranks of time, and marches on in the happy consciousness of profound and multifarious wisdom, immense resources, and magnificent opportunity. He forgets, or even despises, the generations of labour and anguish that have built up for him his great inheritance. The genealogies are a silent protest against such insolent ingratitude. They remind us that in bygone days a man derived his gifts and received his opportunities from his ancestors; they show us men as the links in a chain, tenants for life, as it were, of our estate, called upon to pay back with interest to the future the debt which they have incurred to the past. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
Genealogies as symbols of the solidarity of our race
The genealogies that set forth family histories are the symbols of the brotherhood or solidarity of our race. The chart of converging lines of ancestors in Israel carried mens minds back from the separate families to their common ancestor. As far as they go, the chroniclers genealogies form a clear and instructive diagram of the mutual dependence of men on men and family on family. They are in any case a true symbol of the facts of family relations; but they are drawn, so to speak, in one dimension only, backwards and forwards in time. Yet the real family life exists in three dimensions. A man has not merely his male ancestors in the directly ascending line--father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.
but he has female ancestors as well. By going back three or four generations a man is connected with an immense number of cousins; and if the complete network of ten or fifteen generations could be worked out, it would probably show some blood bond throughout a whole nation. The further we go back the larger is the element of ancestry common to the different individuals of the same community. The chroniclers genealogies only show us individuals as links in a set of chains. The more complete genealogical scheme would be better illustrated by the ganglia of the nervous system, each of which is connected by numerous fibres with the other ganglia. Patriotism and humanity are instincts as natural and as binding as those of the family; and the genealogies express or symbolise the wider family ties, that they may commend the virtues and enforce the duties that arise out of these ties. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)
The antiquity and unity of man
Other nations have had more or less imperfect visions of ancient history and of the unity of the race, but in the Bible alone do we find an authoritative declaration made concerning the antiquity and unity of man and the ultimate destiny of the human race. The Chaldeans had a tradition of ten antediluvian patriarchs or kings. They made the duration of this first period of human history four hundred and thirty-two thousand years. All other chronicles have been bewildered by their polytheism, whereas in the Hebrew history we have all the sublime unity which would seem to be necessitated by the monotheism of the writers. They who believed in one God were likely to believe in one humanity. Monotheism accounts for the two commandments which relate first to God, and then to man. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 1 Chronicles 1-9
NAMES
1 Chronicles 1-9
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THE first nine chapters of Chronicles form, with a few slight exceptions, a continuous list of names. It is the largest extant collection of Hebrew names. Hence these chapters may be used as a text for the exposition of any spiritual significance to be derived from Hebrew names either individually or collectively. Old Testament genealogies have often exercised the ingenuity of the preacher, and the student of homiletics will, readily recollect the methods of extracting a moral from what at first sight seems a barren theme. For instance, those names of which little or nothing is recorded are held up as awful examples of wasted lives. We are asked to take warning from Mahalalel and Methuselah, who spent their long centuries so ineffectually that there was nothing to record except that they begat sons and daughters and died. Such teaching is not fairly derived from its text. The sacred writers implied no reflection upon the Patriarchs of whom they gave so short and conventional an account. Least of all could such teaching be based upon the lists in Chronicles, because the men who are there merely mentioned by name include Adam, Noah, Abraham, and other heroes of sacred story. Moreover, such teaching is unnecessary and not altogether wholesome. Very few men who are at all capable of obtaining a permanent place in history need to be spurred on by sermons; and for most people the suggestion that a mans life is a failure unless he secures posthumous fame is false and mischievous. The Lambs book of life is the only record of the vast majority of honorable and useful lives; and the tendency to self-advertisement is sufficiently wide-spread and spontaneous already: it needs no pulpit stimulus. We do not think any worse of a man because his tombstone simply states his name and age, or any better because it catalogues his virtues and mentions that he attained the dignity of alderman or author.
The significance of these lists of names is rather to be looked for in an opposite direction. It is not that a name and one or two commonplace incidents mean so little, but that they suggest so much. A mere parish register is not in itself attractive, but if we consider even such a list, the very names interest us and kindle our imagination. It is almost impossible to linger in a country churchyard reading the half-effaced inscriptions upon the headstones, without forming some dim picture of the character and history and even the outward semblance of the men and women who once bore the names.
"For though a name is neither hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man,"
yet, to use a somewhat technical phrase, it connotes a man. A name implies the existence of a distinct personality, with a peculiar and unique history, and yet, on the other hand, a being with whom we are linked in close sympathy by a thousand ties of common human nature and everyday experience. In its lists of what are now mere names, the Bible seems to recognize the dignity and sacredness of bare human life.
But the names in these nine chapters have also a collective significance: they stand for more than their individual owners. They are typical and representative, the names of kings, and priests, and captains; they sum up the tribes of Israel, both as a Church and a nation, down all the generations of its history. The inclusion of these names in the sacred record, as the express introduction to the annals of the Temple, and the sacred city, and the elect house of David, is the formal recognition of the sanctity of the nation and of national life. We are entirely in the spirit of the Bible when we see this same sanctity in all organized societies: in the parish, the municipality, and the state; when we attach a Divine significance to registers of electors and census returns, and claim all such lists as symbols of religious privilege and responsibility.
But names do not merely suggest individuals and communities: the meanings of the names reveal the ideas of the people who used them. It has been well said that "the names of every nation are an important monument of national spirit and manners, and thus the Hebrew names bear important testimony to the peculiar vocation of this nation. No nation of antiquity has such a proportion of names of religious import." Amongst ourselves indeed the religious meaning of names has almost wholly faded away; "Christian name" is a mere phrase, and children are named after relations, or according to prevailing fashion, or after the characters of popular novels. But the religious motive can still be traced in some modern names; in certain districts of German the name "Ursula" or "Apollonia" is a sure indication that a girl is a Roman Catholic and has been named after a popular saint. The Bible constantly insists upon this religious significance, which would frequently be in the mind of the devout Israelite in giving names to his children. The Old Testament contains more than a hundred etymologies of personal names, most of which attach a religious meaning to the words explained. The etymologies of the patriarchal names -" Abraham," father of a multitude of nations; "Isaac," laughter; "Jacob,"supplanter; "Israel," prince with God-are specially familiar. The Biblical interest in edifying etymologies was maintained and developed by early commentators. Their philology was far from accurate, and very often they were merely playing upon the forms of words. But the allegorizing tendencies of Jewish and Christian expositors found special opportunities in proper names. On the narrow foundation of an etymology mostly doubtful and often impossible, Philo, and Origen, and Jerome loved to erect an elaborate structure of theological or philosophical doctrine. Philo has only one quotation from our author: "Manasseh had sons, whom his Syrian concubine bare to him, Machir; and Machir begat Gilead." {1Ch_7:14} He quotes this verse to show that recollection is associated in a subordinate capacity with memory. The connection is not very clearly made out, but rests in some way on the meaning of Manasseh, the root of which means to forget. As forgetfulness with recollection restores our knowledge, so Manasseh with his Syrian concubine begets Machir. Recollection therefore is a concubine, an inferior and secondary quality. This ingenious trifling has a certain charm in spite of its extravagance, but in less dexterous hands the method becomes clumsy as well as extravagant. It has, however, the advantage of readily adapting itself to all tastes and opinions, so that we are not surprised when an eighteenth-century author discovers in Old Testament etymology a compendium of Trinitarian theology. Ahiah {1Ch_7:8} is derived from ehad, one, and yah, Jehovah, and is thus an assertion of the Divine unity; Reuel {1Ch_1:35} is resolved into a plural verb with a singular Divine name for its subject: this is an indication of trinity in unity; Ahilud {1Ch_18:15} is derived from ehad, one, and galud, begotten, and signifies that the Son is only-begotten.
Modern scholarship is more rational in its methods, but attaches no less importance to these ancient names, and finds in them weighty evidence on problems of criticism and theology; and before proceeding to more serious matters, we may note a few somewhat exceptional names. As pointed in the present Hebrew text, Hagarmoveth and Azmaveth {1Ch_8:36} have a certain grim suggestiveness. Hazarmaveth, court of death, is given as the name of a descendant of Shem. It is, however, probably the name of a place transferred to an eponymous ancestor, and has been identified with Hadramawt, a district in the south of Arabia. As, however, Hadramawt is a fertile district of Arabia Felix, the name does not seem very appropriate. On the other hand, Azmaveth, "strength of death," would be very suitable for some strong death-dealing soldier. Azubah, {1Ch_2:18} "forsaken," the name of Calebs wife, is capable of a variety of romantic explanations. Hazel-elponi {1Ch_4:3} is remarkable in its mere form; and Ewalds interpretation, "Give shade, Thou who turnest to me Thy countenance," seems rather a cumbrous signification for the name of a daughter of the house of Judah. Jushabhesed, {1Ch_3:20} "Mercy will be renewed," as the name of a son of Zerubbabel, doubtless expresses the gratitude and hope of the Jews on their return from Babylon. Jashubi-lehem, {1Ch_4:22} however, is curious and perplexing. The name has been interpreted "giving bread" or "turning back to Bethlehem," but the text is certainly corrupt, and the passage is one of many into which either the carelessness of scribes or the obscurity of the chroniclers sources has introduced hopeless confusion. But the most remarkable set of names is found in 1Ch_25:4, where Giddalti and Romantiezer, Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, Maha-zioth, are simply a Hebrew sentence meaning, "I have magnified and exalted help; sitting in distress, I have spoken visions in abundance." We may at once set aside the cynical suggestion that the author lacked names to complete a genealogy and, to save the trouble of inventing them separately, took the first sentence that came to hand and cut it up into suitable lengths, nor is it likely that a father would spread the same process over several years and adopt it for his family. This remarkable combination of names is probably due to some misunderstanding of his sources on the part of the chronicler. His parchment rolls must often have been torn and fragmentary, the writing blurred and half illegible; and his attempts to piece together obscure and ragged manuscripts naturally resulted at times in mistakes and confusion.
These examples of interesting etymologies might easily be multiplied; they serve, at any rate, to indicate a rich mine of suggestive teaching. It must, however, be remembered that a name is not necessarily a personal name because it occurs in a genealogy; cities, districts, and tribes mingle freely with persons in these lists. In the same connection we note that the female names are few and far between, and that of those which do occur the "sisters" probably stand for allied and related families, and not for individuals.
As regards Old Testament theology, we may first notice the light thrown by personal names on the relation of the religion of Israel to that of other Semitic peoples. Of the names in these chapters, and elsewhere, a large proportion are compounded of one or other of the Divine names. El is the first element in Elishama, Eliphelet, Eliada, etc.; it is the second in Othniel, Jehaleleel, Asareel, etc. Similarly Jehovah is represented by the initial Jeho-in Jehoshaphat, Jehoiakim, Jehoram, etc., by the final - iah in Amaziah, Azariah, Hezekiah, etc. It has been calculated that there are a hundred and ninety names beginning or ending with the equivalent of Jehovah, including most of the kings of Judah and many of the kings of Israel. Moreover, some names which have not these prefixes and affixes in their extant form are contractions of older forms which began or ended with a Divine name. Ahaz, for instance, is mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions as Jahuhazi-i.e., Jehoahaz-and Nathan is probably a contracted form of Neth-aniah.
There are also numerous compounds of other Divine names. Zur, rock, is found in Pedahzur, {Num_1:10} Shaddai, A.V Almighty, in Ammishaddai; {Num_1:12} the two are combined in Zurishaddai. {Num_1:6} Melech is a Divine name in Malchiram and Malchishua. Baal occurs as a Divine name in Eshbaal and Meribbaal. Abi, father, is a Divine name in Abiram, Abinadab, etc., and probably also Ahi in Ahiram and Ammi in Amminadab. Possibly, too, the apparently simple names Melech, Zur, Baal, are contractions of longer forms in which these Divine names were prefixes or affixes.
This use of Divine names is capable of very varied illustration. Modern languages have Christian and Christopher, Emmanuel, Theodosius, Theodora, etc.; names like Hermogenes and Heliogabalus are found in the classical languages. But the practice is specially characteristic of Semitic languages. Mohammedan princes are still called Abdur-rahman, servant of the Merciful, and Abdallah, servant of God; ancient Phoenician kings were named Ethbaal and Abdalonim, where alonim is a plural Divine name, and the bal in Hannibal and Hasdrubal = baal. The Assyrian and Chaldaean kings were named after the gods Sin, Nebo, Assur, Merodach, e.g., Sin-akki-irib (Sennacherib); Nebuchadnezzar; Assur-bani-pal; Merodach-baladan.
Of these Divine names El and Baal are common to Israel and other Semitic peoples, and it has been held that the Hebrew personal names preserve traces of polytheism. In any case, however, the Baal-names are comparatively few, and do not necessarily indicate that Israelites worshipped a Baal distinct from Jehovah; they may be relics of a time when Baal (Lord) was a title or equivalent of Jehovah, like the later Adonai. Other possible traces of polytheism are few and doubtful. In Baanah and Resheph we may perhaps find the obscure Phoenician deities Anath and Reshaph. On the whole, Hebrew names as compared; for instance, with Assyrian afford little or no evidence of the prevalence of polytheism.
Another question concerns the origin and use of the name Jehovah. Our lists conclusively prove its free use during the monarchy, and its existence under the judges. On the other hand, its apparent presence in Jochebed, the name of the mother of Moses, seems to carry it back beyond Moses. Possibly it was a Divine name peculiar to his family or clan. Its occurrence in Yahubidi, a king of Hamath, in the time of Sargon may be due to direct Israelite influence. Hamath had frequent relations with Israel and Judah.
Turning to matters of practical religion, how far do these names help us to understand the spiritual life of ancient Israel? The Israelites made constant use of El and Jehovah in their names, and we have no parallel practice. Were they then so much more religious than we are? Probably in a sense they were. It is true that the etymology and even the original significance of a name in common use are for all practical purposes quickly and entirely forgotten. A man may go through a life-time bearing the name of Christopher and never know its etymological meaning. At Cambridge and Oxford sacred names like "Jesus "and "Trinity" are used constantly and familiarly without suggesting anything beyond the colleges so called. The edifying phrase, "God encompasseth us," is altogether lost in the grotesque tavern sign "The Goat and Compasses." Nor can we suppose that the Israelite or the Assyrian often dwelt on the religious significance of the Jeho-or- iah, the Nebo, Sin, or Merodach, of current proper names. As we have seen, the sense of -iah, -el, or Jeho-was often so little present to mens minds that contractions were formed by omitting them. Possibly because these prefixes and affixes were so common, they came to be taken for granted; it was scarcely necessary to write them, because in any case they would be understood. Probably in historic times Abi-, Ahi-, and Ammi-were no longer recognized as Divine names or titles; and yet the names which could still be recognized as compounded of El and Jehovah must have had their influence on popular feeling. They were part of the religiousness, so to speak, of the ancient East; they symbolized the constant intertwining of religious acts, and words, and thoughts with all the concerns of life. The quality of this ancient religion was very inferior to that of a devout and intelligent modern Christian; it was perhaps inferior to that of Russian peasants belonging to the Greek Church: but ancient religion pervaded life and society more consciously than modern Christianity does; it touched all classes and occasions more directly, if also more mechanically. And, again, these names were not the fossil relics of obsolete habits of thought and feeling, like the names of our churches and colleges; they were the memorials of comparatively recent acts of faith. The name "Elijah" commemorated the solemn occasion on which a father professed his own faith and consecrated a new-born child to the true God by naming his boy "Jehovah is my God." This name-giving was also a prayer; the child was placed under the protection of the deity whose name it bore. The practice might be tainted with superstition; the name would often be regarded as a kind of amulet; and yet we may believe that it could also serve to express a parents earnest and simple-minded faith. Modern Englishmen have developed a habit of almost complete reticence and reserve on religious matters, and this habit is illustrated by our choice of proper names. Mary, and Thomas, and James are so familiar that their Scriptural origin is forgotten, and therefore they are tolerated; but the use of distinctively Scriptural Christian names is virtually regarded as bad taste. This reticence is not merely due to increased delicacy of spiritual feeling: it is partly the result of the growth of science and of literary and historical criticism. We have become absorbed in the wonderful relations of methods and processes; we are fascinated by the ingenious mechanism of nature and society. We have no leisure to detach our thoughts from the machinery and carry them further on to its Maker and Director. Indeed, because there is so much mechanism and because it is so wonderful, we are sometimes asked to believe that the machine made itself. But this is a mere phase in the religious growth of mankind: humanity will tire of some of its new toys, and will become familiar with the rest; deeper needs and instincts will reassert themselves; and men will find themselves nearer in sentiment than they supposed to the ancient people who named their children after their God. In this and other matters the East today is the same as of old; the permanence of its custom is no inapt symbol of the permanence of Divine truth, which revolution and conquest are powerless to change.
"The East bowed low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again."
But the Christian Church is mistress of a more compelling magic than even Eastern patience and tenacity: out of the storms that threaten her, she draws new energies for service, and learns a more expressive language in which to declare the glory of God.
Let us glance for a moment at the meanings of the group of Divine names given above. We have said that, in addition to Melech in Malehi-, Abi, Ahi, and Ammi are to be regarded as Divine names. One reason for this is that their use as prefixes is strictly analogous to that of El and Jeho-. We have Abijah and Ahijah as well as Elijah, Abiel and Ammiel as well as Eliel, Abiram and Ahiram as well as Jehoram; Ammishaddai compares with Zurishaddai, and Ammizabad with Jehozabad, nor would it be difficult to add many other examples. If this view be correct, Ammi will have nothing to do with the Hebrew word for "people," but will rather be connected with the corresponding Arabic word for "uncle." As the use of such terms as "brother" and "uncle" for Divine names is not consonant with Hebrew theology in its historic period, the names which contain these prefixes must have come down from earlier ages, and were used in later times without any consciousness of their original sense. Probably they were explained by new etymologies more in harmony with the spirit of the times; compare the etymology "father of a multitude of nations" given to Abraham. Even Abi-, father, in the early times to which its use as a prefix must be referred, cannot have had the full spiritual meaning which now attaches to it as a Divine title. It probably only signified the ultimate source of life. The disappearance of these religious terms from the common vocabulary and their use in names long after their significance had been forgotten are ordinary phenomena in the development of language and religion. How many of the millions who use our English names for the days of the week ever give a thought to Thor or Freya? Such phenomena have more than an antiquarian interest. They remind us that religious terms, and phrases, and formulae derive their influence and value from their adaptation to the age which accepts them: and therefore many of them will become unintelligible or even misleading to later generations. Language varies continuously, circumstances change, experience widens, and every age has a right to demand that Divine truth shall be presented in the words and metaphors that give it the clearest and most forcible expression. Many of the simple truths that are most essential to salvation admit of being stated once for all; but dogmatic theology fossilizes fast, and the bread of one generation may become a stone to the next.
The history of these names illustrates yet another phenomenon. In some narrow and imperfect sense the early Semitic peoples seem to have called God "Father" and "Brother." Because the terms were limited to a narrow sense, the Israelites grew to a level of religious truth at which they could no longer use them; but as they made yet further progress they came to know more of what was meant by fatherhood and brotherhood, and gained also a deeper knowledge of God. At length the Church resumed these ancient Semitic terms; and Christians call God "Abba, Father," and speak of the Eternal Son as their elder Brother. And thus sometimes, but not always, an antique phrase may for a time seem unsuitable and misleading, and then again may prove to be the best expression for the newest and fullest truth. Our criticism of a religious formula may simply reveal our failure to grasp the wealth of meaning which its words and symbols can contain.
Turning from these obsolete names to those in common use-El; Jehovah; Shaddai; Zur; Melech-probably the prevailing idea popularly associated with them all was that of strength: El, Strength in the abstract; Jehovah, strength shown in permanence and independence; Shaddai, the strength that causes terror, the Almighty from whom cometh destruction; Zur, rock, the material symbol of strength; Melech, king, the possessor of authority. In early times the first and most essential attribute of Deity is power, but with this idea of strength a certain attribute of beneficence is soon associated. The strong God is the Ally of His people; His permanence is the guarantee of their national existence; He destroys their enemies. The rock is a place of refuge; and, again, Jehovahs people may rejoice in the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The King leads them to battle, and gives them their enemies for a spoil.
We must not, however, suppose that pious Israelites would consciously and systematically discriminate between these names, any more than ordinary Christians do between God, Lord, Father, Christ, Savior, Jesus. Their usages would be governed by changing currents of sentiment very difficult to understand and explain after the lapse of thousands of years. In the year A.D. 3000, for instance, it will be difficult for the historian of dogmatics to explain accurately why some nineteenth-century Christians preferred to speak of "dear Jesus" and others of "the Christ."
But the simple Divine names reveal comparatively little; much more may be learnt from the numerous compounds they help to form. Some of the more curious have already been noticed, but the real significance of this nomenclature is to be looked for in the more ordinary and natural names. Here, as before, we can only select from the long and varied list. Let us take some of the favorite names and some of the roots most often used, almost always, be it remembered, in combination with Divine names. The different varieties of these sacred names rendered it possible to construct various personal names embodying the same idea. Also the same Divine name might be used either as prefix or affix. For instance, the idea that "God knows" is equally well expressed in the names Eliada (El-yada), Jediael (Yada-el), Jehoiada (Jeho-yada), and Jedaiah (Yada-yah). "God remembers" is expressed alike by Zachariah and Jozachar; " God hears" by Elishama (El-shama), Samuel (if for Shama-el), Ishmael (also from Shama-el), Shemaiah, and Ishmaiah (both from Shama and Yah); "God gives" by Elnathan, Nethaneel, Jonathan, and Nethaniah; " God helps" by Eliezer, Azareel, Joezer, and Azariah; " God is gracious" by Elhanan, Hananeel, Johanan, Ha-naniah, Baal-hanan, and, for a Carthaginian, Hannibal, giving us a curious connection between the Apostle of love, John (Johanan), and the deadly enemy of Rome.
The way in which the changes are rung upon these ideas shows how the ancient Israelites loved to dwell upon them. Nestle reckons that in the Old Testament sixty-one persons have names farmed from the root nathan, to give; fifty-seven from shama, to hear; fifty-six from azar, to help; forty-five from hanan, to be gracious; forty-four from zakhar, to remember. Many persons, too, bear names from the root yada, to know. The favorite name is Zechariah, which is borne by twenty-five different persons.
Hence, according to the testimony of names, the Israelites favorite ideas about God were that He heard, and knew, and remembered; that He was gracious, and helped men, and gave them gifts: but they loved best to think of Him as God the Giver. Their nomenclature recognizes many other attributes, but these take the first place. The value of this testimony is enhanced by its utter unconsciousness and naturalness; it brings us nearer to the average man in his religious moments than any psalm or prophetic utterance. Mens chief interest in God was as the Giver. The idea has proved very permanent; St. James amplifies it: God is the Giver of every good and perfect gift. It lies latent in names: Theodosius, Theodore, Theodora, and Dorothea. The other favorite ideas are all related to this. God hears mens prayers, and knows their needs, and remembers them; He is gracious, and helps them by His gifts. Could anything be more pathetic than this artless self-revelation? Mens minds have little leisure for sin and salvation; they are kept down by the constant necessity of preserving and providing for a bare existence. Their cry to God is like the prayer of Jacob, "If Thou wilt give me bread to eat and raiment to put on!" The very confidence and gratitude that the names express imply periods of doubt and fear, when they said, "Can God prepare a table in the wilderness?" times when it seemed to them impossible that God could have heard their prayer or that He knew their misery, else why was there no deliverance? Had God forgotten to be gracious? Did He indeed remember? The names come to us as answers of faith to these suggestions of despair.
Possibly these old-world saints were not more pre-occupied with their material needs than most modern Christians. Perhaps it is necessary to believe in a God who rules on earth before we can understand the Father who is in heaven. Does a man really trust in God for eternal life if he cannot trust Him for daily bread? But in any case these names provide us with very comprehensive formulae, which we are at liberty to apply as freely as we please: the God who knows, and hears, and remembers, who is gracious, and helps men, and gives them gifts. To begin with, note how in a great array of Old Testament names God is the Subject, Actor, and Worker; the supreme facts of life are God and Gods doings, not man and mans doings, what God is to man, not what man is to God. This is a foreshadowing of the Christian doctrines of grace and of the Divine sovereignty. And again we are left to fill in the objects of the sentences for ourselves: God hears, and remembers, and gives-what? All that we have to say to Him and all that we are capable of receiving from Him.
HEREDITY
1 Chronicles 1-9
IT has been said that Religion is the great discoverer of truth, while Science follows her slowly and after a long interval. Heredity, so much discussed just now, is sometimes treated as if its principles were a great discovery of the present century. Popular science is apt to ignore history and to mistake a fresh nomenclature for an entirely new system of truth, and yet the immense and far-reaching importance of heredity has been one of the commonplaces of thought ever since history began. Science has been anticipated, not merely by religious feeling, but by a universal instinct. In the old world political and social systems have been based upon the recognition of the principle of heredity, and religion has sanctioned such recognition. Caste in India is a religious even more than a social institution; and we use the term figuratively in reference to ancient and modern life, even when the institution has not formally existed. Without the aid of definite civil or religious law the force of sentiment and circumstances suffices to establish an informal system of caste. Thus the feudal aristocracy and guilds of the Middle Ages were not without their rough counterparts in the Old Testament. Moreover, the local divisions of the Hebrew kingdoms corresponded in theory, at any rate, to blood relationships; and the tribe, the clan, and the family had even more fixity and importance than now belong to the parish or the municipality. A mans family history or genealogy was the ruling factor in determining his home, his occupation, and his social position. In the chroniclers time this was especially the case with the official ministers of religion, the Temple establishment to which he himself belonged. The priests, the Levites, the singers, and doorkeepers formed castes in the strict sense of the word. A mans birth definitely assigned him to one of these classes, to which none but the members of certain families could belong.
But the genealogies had a deeper significance. Israel was Jehovahs chosen people, His son, to whom special privileges were guaranteed by solemn covenant. A mans claim to share in this covenant depended on his genuine Israelite descent, and the proof of such descent was an authentic genealogy. In these chapters the chronicle has taken infinite pains to collect pedigrees from all available sources and to construct a complete set of genealogies exhibiting the lines of descent of the families of Israel. His interest in this research was not merely antiquarian: he was investigating matters of the greatest social and religious importance to all the members of the Jewish community, and especially to his colleagues and friends in the Temple service. These chapters, which seem to us so dry and useless, were probably regarded by the chroniclers contemporaries as the most important part of his work. The preservation or discovery of a genealogy was almost a matter of life and death. Witness the episode in Ezra and Nehemiah: {Ezr_2:61-63 Neh_7:63-65} "And of the priests: the children of Hobaiah, the children of Hakkoz, the children of Barzillai, which took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name. These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but it was not found; therefore they were deemed polluted and put from the priesthood. And the governor said unto them that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim." Cases like these would stimulate our authors enthusiasm. As he turned over dusty receptacles, and unrolled frayed parchments, and painfully deciphered crabbed and faded script, he would be excited by the hope of discovering some mislaid genealogy that would restore outcasts, to their full status and privileges as Israelites and priests. Doubtless he had already acquired in some measure the subtle exegesis and minute casuistry that were the glory of later Rabbinism. Ingenious interpretation of obscure writing or the happy emendation of half-obliterated words might lend opportune aid in the recovery of a genealogy. On the other hand, there were vested interests ready to protest against the too easy acceptance of new claims. The priestly families of undoubted descent from Aaron would not thank a chronicler for reviving lapsed rights to a share in the offices and revenues of the Temple. This part of our authors task was as delicate as it was important.
We will now briefly consider the genealogies in these chapters in the order in which they are given. Chapter 1 contains genealogies of the patriarchal period selected from Genesis. The existing races of the world are all traced back through Shem, Ham, and Japheth to Noah, and through him to Adam. The chronicler thus accepts and repeats the doctrine of Genesis that God made of one every nation of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. {Act_17:26} All mankind, "Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman," {Col_3:11} were alike descended from Noah, who was saved from the Flood by the special care of God; from Enoch, who walked with God; from Adam, who was created by God in His own image and likeness. The Israelites did not claim, like certain Greek clans, to be the descendants of a special god of their own, or, like the Athenians, to have sprung miraculously from sacred soil. Their genealogies testified that not merely Israelite nature, but human nature, is molded on a Divine pattern. These apparently barren lists of names enshrine the great principles of the universal brotherhood of men and the universal Fatherhood of God. The chronicler wrote when the broad universalism of the prophets was being replaced by the hard exclusiveness of Judaism; and yet, perhaps unconsciously, he reproduces the genealogies which were to be one weapon of St. Paul in his struggle with that exclusiveness. The opening chapters of Genesis and Chronicles are among the foundations of the catholicity of the Church of Christ.
For the antediluvian period only the Sethite genealogy is given. The chroniclers object was simply to give the origin of existing races; and the descendants of Cain were omitted, as entirely destroyed by the Flood.
Following the example of Genesis, the chronicler gives the genealogies of other races at the points at which they diverge from the ancestral line of Israel, and then continues the family history of the chosen race. In this way the descendants of Japheth and Ham, the non-Abrahamic Semites, the Ishmaelites, the sons of Keturah, and the Edomites are successively mentioned.
The relations of Israel with Edom were always close and mostly hostile. The Edomites had taken advantage of the overthrow of the Southern Kingdom to appropriate the south of Judah, and still continued to occupy it. The keen interest felt by the chronicler in Edom is shown by the large space devoted to the Edomites. The close contiguity of the Jews and Idumaeans tended to promote mutual intercourse between them, and even threatened an eventual fusion of the two peoples. As a matter of fact, the Idumaean Herods became rulers of Judaea. To guard against such dangers to the separateness of the Jewish people, the chronicler emphasises the historical distinction of race between them and the Edomites.
From the beginning of the second chapter onwards the genealogies are wholly occupied with Israelites. The authors special interest in Judah is at once manifested. After giving the list of the twelve Patriarchs he devotes two and a half chapters to the families of Judah. Here again the materials have been mostly obtained from the earlier historical books. They are, however, combined with more recent traditions, so that in this chapter matter from different sources is pieced together in a very confusing fashion. One source of this confusion was the principle that the Jewish community could only consist of families of genuine Israelite descent. Now a large number of the returned exiles traced their descent to two brothers, Caleb and Jerahmeel; but in the older narratives Caleb and Jerahmeel are not Israelites. Caleb is a Kenizzite, {Jos_14:6} and his descendants and those of Jerahmeel appear in close connection with the Kenites. {1Sa_27:10} Even in this chapter certain of the Calebites are called Kenites and connected in some strange way with the Rechabites. Though at the close of the monarchy the Calebites and Jerahmeelites had become an integral part of the tribe of Judah, their separate origin had not been forgotten, and Caleb and Jerahmeel had not been included in the Israelite genealogies. But after the Exile men came to feel more and more strongly that a common faith implied unity of race. Moreover, the practical unity of the Jews with these Kenizzites overbore the dim and fading memory of ancient tribal distinctions. Jews and Kenizzites had shared the Captivity, the Exile, and the Return; they worked, and fought, and worshipped side by side; and they were to all intents and purposes one nation, alike the people of Jehovah. This obvious and important practical truth was expressed as such truths were then wont to be expressed. The children of Caleb and Jerahmeel were finally and formally adopted into the chosen race. Caleb and Jerahmeel are no longer the sons of Jephunneh the Kenizzite; they are the sons of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah. A new genealogy was formed as a recognition rather than an explanation of accomplished facts.
Of the section containing the genealogies of Judah, the lions share is naturally given to the house of David, to which a part of the second chapter and the whole of the third are devoted.
Next follow genealogies of the remaining tribes, those of Levi and Benjamin being by far the most complete. Chapter 6, which is devoted to Levi, affords evidence of the use by the chronicler of independent and sometimes inconsistent sources, and also illustrates his special interest in the priesthood and the Temple choir. A list of high-priests from Aaron to Ahimaaz is given twice over (1Ch_6:4-8 and 1Ch_6:49-53), but only one line of high-priests is recognized, the house of Zadok, whom Josiahs reforms had made the one priestly family in Israel. Their ancient rivals the high-priests of the house of Eli are as entirely ignored as the antediluvian Cainites. The existing high-priestly dynasty had been so long established that these other priests of Saul and David seemed no longer to have any significance for the religion of Israel.
The pedigree of the three Levitical families of Gershom, Kohath, and Merari is also given twice over: in 1Ch_6:16-30 and 1Ch_6:31-49. The former pedigree begins with the sons of Levi, and proceeds to their descendants; the latter begins with the founders of the guilds of singers, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, and traces back their genealogies to Kohath, Gershom, and Merari respectively. But the pedigrees do not agree; compare, for instance, the lists of the Kohathites:- 1Ch_6:22-24; 1Ch_6:36-38 Kohath Kohath Amminadab Izhar Korah Korah Assir Elkanah Ebiasaph Ebiasaph Assir Assir Tahath Tahath Uriel Zephaniah Uzziah Asariah Shaul Etc. We have here one of many illustrations of the fact that the chronicler used materials of very different value. To attempt to prove the absolute consistency of all his genealogies would be mere waste of time. It is by no means certain that he himself supposed them to be consistent. The frank juxtaposition of varying lists of ancestors rather suggests that he was prompted by a scholarly desire to preserve for his readers all available evidence of every kind.
In reading the genealogies of the tribe of Benjamin, it is specially interesting to find that in the Jewish community of the Restoration there were families tracing their descent through Mephibosheth and Jonathan to Saul. Apparently the chronicler and his contemporaries shared this special interest in the fortunes of a fallen dynasty, for the genealogy is given twice over. These circumstances are the more striking because in the actual history of Chronicles Saul is all but ignored.
The rest of the ninth chapter deals with the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the ministry of the Temple after the return from the Captivity, and is partly identical with sections of Ezra and Nehemiah. It closes the family history, as it were, of Israel, and its position indicates the standpoint and ruling interests of the chronicler.
Thus the nine opening chapters of genealogies and kindred matter strike the keynotes of the whole book. Some are personal and professional: some are religious. On the one hand, we have the origin of existing families and institutions; on the other hand, we have the election of the tribe of Judah and the house of David, of the tribe of Levi and the house of Aaron.
Let us consider first the hereditary character of the Jewish religion and priesthood. Here, as elsewhere, the formal doctrine only recognized and accepted actual facts. The conditions which received the sanction of religion were first imposed by the force of circumstances. In primitive times, if there was to be any religion at all, it had to be national; if God was to be worshipped at all, His worship was necessarily national, and He became in some measure a national God. Sympathies are limited by knowledge and by common interest. The ordinary Israelite knew very little of any other people than his own. There was little international comity in primitive times, and nations were slow to recognize that they had common interests. It was difficult for an Israelite to believe that his beloved Jehovah, in whom he had been taught to trust, was also the God of the Arabs and Syrians, who periodically raided his crops, and cattle, and slaves, and sometimes carried off his children, or of the Chaldaeans, who made deliberate and complete arrangements for plundering the whole country, razing its cities to the ground, and carrying away the population into distant exile. By a supreme act of faith, the prophets claimed the enemies and oppressors of Israel as instruments of the will of Jehovah, and the chroniclers genealogies show that he shared this faith; but it was still inevitable that the Jews should look out upon the world at large from the standpoint of their own national interests and experience. Jehovah was God of heaven and earth; but Israelites knew Him through the deliverance He had wrought for Israel, the punishments He had inflicted on her sins, and the messages He had entrusted to her prophets. As far as their knowledge and practical experience went, they knew Him as the God of Israel. The course of events since the fall of Samaria narrowed still further the local associations of Hebrew worship.
"God was wroth, And greatly abhorred Israel, So that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, The tent which He placed among men";
"He refused the tent of Joseph, And chose not the tribe of Ephraim, But chose the tribe of Judah, The Mount Zion which He loved: And He built His sanctuary like the heights Like the earth, which He hath established forever." {Psa_78:59-60; Psa_78:67-69}
We are doubtless right in criticizing those Jews whose limitations led them to regard Jehovah as a kind of personal possession, the inheritance of their own nation, and not of other peoples. But even here we can only blame their negations. Jehovah was their inheritance and personal possession; but then He was also the in heritance of other nations. This Jewish heresy is by no means extinct: white men do not always believe that their God is equally the God of the Negro; Englishmen are inclined to think that God is the God of England in a more especial way than He is the God of France. When we discourse concerning God in history, we mostly mean our own history. We can see the hand of Providence m the wreck of the Armada and the overthrow of Napoleon; but we are not so ready to recognize in the same Napoleon the Divine instrument that created a new Europe by relieving her peoples from cruel and degrading tyranny. We scarcely realize that God cares as much for the Continent as He does for our island.
We have great and perhaps sufficient excuses, but we must let the Jews have the benefit of them. God is as much the God of one nation as of another; but He fulfils Himself to different nations in different ways, by a various providential discipline. Each people is bound to believe that God has specially adapted His dealings to its needs, nor can we be surprised if men forget or fail to observe that God has done no less for their neighbors. Each nation rightly regards its religious ideas, and life and literature as a precious inheritance peculiarly its own; and it should not be too severely blamed for being ignorant that other nations have their inheritance also. Such considerations largely justify the interest in heredity shown by the chroniclers genealogies. On the positive, practical side, religion is largely a matter of heredity, and ought to be. The Christian sacrament of baptism is a continual profession of this truth: our children are "clean"; they are within the covenant of grace; we claim for them the privileges of the Church to which we belong. That was also part of the meaning of the genealogies.
In the broad field of social and religious life the problems of heredity are in some ways less complicated than in the more exact discussions of physical science. Practical effects can be considered without attempting an accurate analysis of causes. Family history not only determines physical constitution, mental gifts, and moral character, but also fixes for the most part country, home, education, circumstances, and social position. All these were a mans inheritance more peculiarly in Israel than with us; and in many cases in Israel a man was often trained to inherit a family profession. Apart from the ministry of the Temple, we read of a family of craftsmen, of other families that were potters, of others who dwelt with the king for his work, and of the families of the house of them that wrought fine linen. {1Ch_14:1-2} Religion is largely involved in the manifold inheritance which a man receives from his fathers. His birth determines his religious education, the examples of religious life set before him, the forms of worship in which as a child he takes part. Most men live and die in the religion of their childhood; they worship the God of their fathers; Romanist remains Romanist: Protestant remains Protestant. They may fail to grasp any living faith, or may lose all interest in religion; but such religion as most men have is part of their inheritance. In the Israel of the chronicler faith and devotion to God were almost always and entirely inherited. They were part of the great debt which a man owed to his fathers.
The recognition of these facts should tend to foster our humility and reverence, to encourage patriotism and philanthropy. We are the creatures and debtors of the past, though we are slow to own our obligations. We have nothing that we have not received; but we are apt to consider ourselves self-made men, the architects and builders of our own fortunes, who have the right to be self-satisfied, self-assertive, and selfish. The heir of all the ages, in the full vigor of youth, takes his place in the foremost ranks of time, and marches on in the happy consciousness of profound and multifarious wisdom, immense resources, and magnificent opportunity. He forgets or even despises the generations of labor and anguish that have built up for him his great inheritance. The genealogies are a silent protest against such insolent ingratitude. They remind us that in bygone days a man derived his gifts and received his opportunities from his ancestors; they show us men as the links in a chain, tenants for life, as it were, of our estate, called upon to pay back with interest to the future the debt which they have incurred to the past. We see that the chain is a long one, with many links; and the slight estimate we are inclined to put upon the work of individuals in each generation recoils upon our own pride. We also are but individuals of a generation that is only one of the thousands needed to work out the Divine purpose for mankind. We are taught the humility that springs from a sense of obligation and responsibility.
We learn reverence for the workers and achievements of the past, and most of all for God. We are reminded of the scale of the Divine working:-
"A thousand years in Thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is past,
And as a watch in the night."
A genealogy is a brief and pointed reminder that God has been working through all the countless generations behind us. The bare series of names is an expressive diagram of His mighty process. Each name in the earlier lists stands for a generation or even for several generations. The genealogies go back into dim, prehistoric periods; they suggest a past too remote for our imagining. And yet they take us back to Adam, to the very beginning of human life. From that beginning, however, many thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, the life of man has been sacred, the object of the Divine care and love, the instrument of the Divine purpose.
Later on we see the pedigree of our race dividing into countless branches, all of which are represented in this sacred diagram of humanity. The Divine working not only extends over all time, but also embraces all the complicated circumstances and relationships of the families of mankind. These genealogies suggest a lesson probably not intended by the chronicler. We recognize the unique character of the history of Israel, but in some measure we discern in this one full and detailed narrative of the chosen people a type of the history of every race. Others had not the election of Israel, but each had its own vocation. Gods power, and wisdom, and love are manifested in the history of one chosen people on a scale commensurate with our limited faculties, so that we may gain some faint, idea of the marvelous providence in all history of the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.
Another principle closely allied to heredity and also discussed in modern times is the solidarity of the race. Humanity is supposed to possess something akin to a common consciousness, personality, or individuality. Such a quality evidently becomes more intense as we narrow its scope from the race to the nation, the clan, and the family; it has its roots in family relationships. Tribal, national, humanitarian feelings indicate that the larger societies have taken upon themselves something of the character of the family. Thus the common feelings and mutual sympathies of mankind are due ultimately to blood relationship. The genealogies that set forth family histories are the symbols of this brotherhood or solidarity of our race. The chart of converging lines of ancestors in Israel carried mens minds back from the separate families to their common ancestor; again, the ancestry of ancestors led back to a still earlier common origin, and the process continued till all the lines met in Noah. Each stage of the process enlarged the range of every mans kinship, and broadened the natural area of mutual help and affection. It is true that the Jews failed to learn this larger lesson from their genealogies, but within their own community they felt intensely the bond of kinship and brotherhood. Modern patriotism reproduces the strong Jewish national feeling, and our humanitarianism is beginning to extend it to the whole world. By this time the facts of heredity have been more carefully studied and are better understood. If we drew up typical genealogies now, they would more fully and accurately represent the mutual relationships of our people. As far as they go, the chroniclers genealogies form a clear and instructive diagram of the mutual dependence of man on man and family on family. The value of the diagram does not require the accuracy of the actual names any more than the validity of Euclid requires the actual existence of triangles called A B C, D E F. These genealogies are in any case a true symbol of the facts of family relations; but they are drawn, so to speak, in one dimension only, backwards and forwards in time. Yet the real family life exists in three dimensions. There are numerous cross-relations, cousinship of all degrees, as well as sonship and brotherhood. A man has not merely his male ancestors in the directly ascending line-father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc.-but he has female ancestors as well. By going back three or four generations a man is connected with an immense number of cousins; and if the complete network of ten or fifteen generations could be worked out, it would probably show some blood bond throughout a whole nation. Thus the ancestral roots of a mans life and character have wide ramifications in the former generations of his people. The further we go back the larger is the element of ancestry common to the different individuals of the same community. The chroniclers genealogies only show us individuals as links in a set of chains. The more complete genealogical scheme would be better illustrated by the ganglia of the nervous system, each of which is connected by numerous nerve fibers with the other ganglia. The Church has been compared to the body, "which is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body." Humanity, by its natural kinship, is also such a body; the nation is still more truly "one body." Patriotism and humanity are instincts as natural and as binding as those of the family; and the genealogies express or symbolize the wider family ties, that they may commend the virtues and enforce the duties that arise out of these ties.
Before closing this chapter something may be said on one or two special points. Women are virtually ignored in these genealogies, a fact that rather indicates a failure to recognize their influence than the absence of such influence. Here and there a woman is mentioned for some special reason. For instance, the names of Zeruiah and Abigail are inserted in order to show that Joab, Abishai, and Asahel, together with Amasa, were all cousins of David. The same keen interest in David leads the chronicler to record the names of his wives. It is noteworthy that of the four women who are mentioned in St. Matthews genealogy of our Lord only two-Tamar and Bath-shua (i.e., Bathsheba)-are mentioned here. Probably St. Matthew was careful to complete the list because Rahab and Ruth, like Tamar and possibly Bathsheba, were foreigners, and their names in the genealogy indicated a connection between Christ and the Gentiles, and served to emphasize His mission to be the Savior of the world.
Again, much caution is necessary in applying any principle of heredity. A genealogy, as we have seen, suggests our dependence in many ways upon our ancestry. But a mans relations to his kindred are many and complicated; a quality, for instance, may be latent for one or more generations and then reappear, so that to all appearance a man inherits from his grandfather or from a more remote ancestor rather than from his father or mother. Conversely the presence of certain traits of character in a child does not show that any corresponding tendency has necessarily been active in the life of either parent. Neither must the influence of circumstances be confounded with that of heredity. Moreover, very large allowance must be made for our ignorance of the laws that govern the human will, an ignorance that will often baffle our attempts to find in heredity any simple explanation of mens characters and actions. Thomas Fuller has a quaint "Scripture observation" that gives an important practical application of these principles:-
Lord, I find the genealogy of my Savior strangely chequered with four remarkable changes in four immediate generations:
1. Rehoboam begat Abiam; that is, a bad father begat a bad son.
2. Abiam begat Asa; that is, a bad father a good son.
3. Asa begat Jehosaphat; that is, a good father a good son.
4. Jehosaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad son.
"I see, Lord, from hence that my fathers piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see also that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 CRITICAL NOTES.] The writer gives no explanation or introduction,…
CRITICAL NOTES.] The writer gives no explanation or introduction, presumes upon the knowledge of the reader, and simply enumerates names from Creation to the Flood, contained in Genesis 5. The Deluge, 1,656 years from the creation of Adam.
1Ch_1:1-4.—These names embrace Genesis 1-9, which the reader is presumed to know. This furnishes a principle of interpretation to other parts of the book. The Hebrew pointing will often account for the orthography of the names.
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1Ch_1:5-7.—List of sons and grandsons of Japheth (cf. Genesis 10. Noah’s sons in order of Gen_10:1). Beginning with Japheth, youngest, to dispose of what is not exactly required, the writer gives seven sons—three through Gomer, the eldest son, and four through Javan, the fourth son.
1Ch_1:8-16.—Descendants of Ham, sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. Four sons of Ham; six grandsons, including Nimrod, through Cush, the eldest son of Ham; seven grandsons through Mizraim, second son of Ham; two great-grandsons through Raamah, Cush’s fourth son; 30 altogether.
1Ch_1:17-27.—Shem’s descendants to Abraham. A pause half way at the name of Peleg, 1Ch_1:19, to mention Joktan, his brother, and then Joktan’s thirteen sons, 1Ch_1:20-23. Then repeating the first five names of lineal descent, and picking up the thread at Peleg, the remaining five to Abraham are given—Genesis 11-17—given as briefly as possible. Abraham the tenth from Noah, and twentieth from Adam.
1Ch_1:28-33.—The collaterals of Isaac. This reaches from Genesis 16-25. Isaac put first as child of promise, though born fourteen years after Ishmael (Gen_17:25; Gen_21:5). So Shem put first, though second son. This must be kept in mind in examination of lists. From call of Abraham to birth of Isaac, thirty years. 1Ch_1:29-31 taken from Gen_25:12-16. Their generations, a new starting-point, modified from Gen_25:12, to include Isaac as well as Ishmael. 1Ch_1:32-33 abridged from Gen_25:1-4. The sons of Dedan omitted (Murphy).
1Ch_1:34-37.—Descendants of Esau (cf. Gen_36:10-14). Timna, 1Ch_1:36, seems to have been concubine of Eliphaz and Amalek, another son by her. 1Ch_1:37, four grandsons of Esau by Reuel.
1Ch_1:38-42.—Descendants of Seir. Seir probably a Shemite, though his relation is unrecorded (cf. Murphy). Twenty-seven names given agree with Gen_36:20-27, except for Homam, Alian, Shephi, Amram, and Jakan we have Hemam, Alvan, Shepho, Hemdan, and Akan.
1Ch_1:43-50.—The Kings of Edom (cf. Gen_36:31-43). Before any king, before Israel had any civil government, or became a nation with a king. There are eight names, the parentage or the land of each given.
1Ch_1:51-54.—The Dukes of Edom. Eleven given. Some think a list of places, not of persons, compared with Gen_36:15; Gen_36:41; Gen_36:43. This ch. contains genealogies which embrace about 2,300 years. Not a remark given apparently, moral, religious, or didactic. It connects Israel with Adam, and retraces the pedigree of men to its original source.
HOMILETICS
THREE PAGES OF HUMAN HISTORY.—1Ch_1:1
Names are potent things, represent mighty factors, sustaining forces in life, and important periods in history. We are apt to think genealogies are dry, and names of no significance, but Scripture nomenclature reads a different lesson. How suggestive the names in 1Ch_1:11
I. The creation of man. Adam first and representative of the race. The historic man, apparently no “prehistoric man.” The creation of man a decree and last work of God, the crowning point of all. In man, and through man, nature finds its purpose and transformation.
II. The inspiration of hope. Seth means fixed, settled, or compensation. He came in the place of Abel taken away. At birth of Cain, Eve hasty in joy (I have gotten the man); in Abel (vanity, perishable) desponding; in Seth confident. Divine power compensated for what human cruelty took away, inspired hope of permanent blessing. God can wonderfully comfort. If one gone, He can give another. He can strengthen, establish, and perpetuate the family and the Church, so that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.”
III. The beginning of public worship. Enos designates weakness, human frailty, a sorrowful remembrance of Abel (Psa_8:5; Psa_90:3). How soon are hopes dashed! But God becomes great when we feel small. “Then began men to call upon (proclaim, announce) Jehovah” (Gen_4:26). A new line of promise in Enoch (Enos) after line of Cain had lost it. Hope finds expression in formal worship. The Sethites merge into a community, outline a church, and publicly honour Jehovah. In a new race and a believing generation God’s name ever presented with higher glory and greater attractions.
SOLEMN VIEWS OF HUMAN LIFE.—1Ch_1:1-4
I. The beginning of human life. In Adam a distinct beginning of humanity on earth, not as a physical act merely or completion of physical progress. It happened in the supernatural and spiritual. “Not merely formation, animation, but direct, divine inspiration” (Gen_2:7) [Tayler Lewis]. From the first man spring all the race. History and science cannot present the contrary. “The first man was made a living soul.”
II. The length of human life. Before the Flood men long-lived (cf. Genesis 5). Accounted for
1. By natural causes. Habits simple, food nutritious, and climate healthy.
2. By providential design. To establish institutions, people the earth, and propagate truth.
III. The corruption of human life. The Cainites ungodly—first civilisation worldly, art and culture misused, polygamy prevails, races intermix, unbelief and Titanic pride corrupt the race. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen_6:5).
IV. The destruction of human life. Evil contagious, rapidly spread and deteriorated the race. They were flesh, wholly carnal or animal. “He also is flesh” (Gen_6:3). In wanton deeds, divine warnings despised, the Holy Spirit grieved. The world ripe for judgment. God repented, that is, changed his procedure, not his purpose, concerning man (Gen_6:7-8). The Flood swept “every living thing from off the earth.”
V. The deliverance of human life. A few were saved (1Pe_3:20). Noah and his family preserved, and were progenitors of a redeemed race. God held human life sacred, bound himself by signs never more to destroy it by flood. Noah, the last of Sethic race and first in the line of Shem, a second ancestor of the human family. Man rises to a higher place in the world. As a believer he is saved from general wreck, inherits a new earth purged from sin, and becomes heir of a righteousness by faith.
THE HUMAN RACE, IN ITS UNITY, PROGRESS, AND DECLENSION.—1Ch_1:1-54
Glancing at these names, what an insight into human life, human activity and circumstances!
I. The unity of the race. The race not merely represented but comprehended in Adam. “Made of one (blood) all nations of men” (Act_17:26). Mankind not “a living sand-heap,” without generic connection. The Bible sees in Adam “the power of a single life—men one before they became many; and as many, still one.” One natural “fatherhood,” and one “common brotherhood” in him. “One touch of nature makes the world kin.”
II. The progress of the race. Every movement implies beginning, progress, and consummation. This makes history.
1. In knowledge. Not from barbarism at first, but from supernatural light shining directly or indirectly on human steps.
2. In arts. Lamech’s three sons authors of inventions (Gen_4:20-23). Culture and science as old as humanity. Barbarism and brutality result from corrupt civilisation.
3. In civil government. Cities built, states founded, kingdoms formed, titles given, and rulers chosen.
4. In population. Beginning from a single pair, in seven generations the human family attained considerable increase. “If Abraham’s stock, in less than 400 years, amounted to 600,000, Cain’s posterity, in the like time, might arise to the like multitude” [Willet]. It should remind of the reality and power of God’s blessing (Gen_1:28).
5. In religion. Abel’s piety revived in the godly Sethites. “While the family of Cainites, by the erection of a city and the invention and development of worldly arts and business, were laying the foundation for the kingdom of this world, the family of the Sethites began, by united invocation of the name of the God of grace, to found and erect the kingdom of God” [Delitzsch]. Separation from ungodly associates needful. This, with social worship, checks declension and secures advancement.
III. The declension of the race. Before the Flood, licentiousness and violence, pride and self-gratification. This
1. Seen in sinful works. Nothing wrong to build cities, handle harps, and cultivate poetry and music. These intended for the benefit of men, and should be consecrated to the service of God. But sadly misapplied when they lead to pride and forgetfulness of God.
2. Seen in ungodly lives. Cain, the murderer; Lamech, the polygamist; Nimrod, the powerful tyrant (Gen_10:8). “The earth was filled with violence.”
3. Seen in significant names. Qualities, principles, and characteristics seen in names of Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Lamech, &c. (Gen_4:23-26). Adah and Zillah indicative of sensual attractions. Learn the danger of intellect and civilisation separated from religion, the downward progress of sin, and the necessity, in these days of science and mechanical invention, of steadfastly fearing God and maintaining public worship.
“Grieved at his heart when, looking down, he saw
The whole earth filled with violence” [Milton].
POSTERITY OF NOAH’S SONS.—1Ch_1:5-23
I. The enemies of the Church. 1. Sons of Japhet (1Ch_1:5-7 and Gen_10:2-5). Trace the wide world-wandering, in which future generations disappear from the theocratic line.
2. Sons of Ham (1Ch_1:8-16). Hamite culture early, corrupt and mixed with Cainite elements.
II. Allies of the Church (1Ch_1:17-23). In the line of Shem we have the gravitation of humanity to its centre, the gradual preparation for the calling of Abraham, and for the Messianic descent. Shem’s history, the last in the world, first in the kingdom of God.
THE MIGHTY HUNTER.—1Ch_1:10
In the formal register of Gen_10:8-12, a brief account of an individual inserted. A fact of importance, because it concerned the Hebrews to know that though their own ancestors came from the region where Nimrod played so conspicuous a part, the great kingdom, afterwards known as Babylon, was of Cushite, not of Semitic origin [Dr. Dods].
1. His descent. Cush begat Nimrod. He is put back before the time of Abraham and assigned to the Ethiopian race.
2. His occupation. “He was a mighty hunter.” Hunting of ravenous beasts a benevolent act for the human race. Powerful huntsmen pioneers of civilisation, as in the myth of Hercules. Nimrod, successful, became a great man, conqueror, and ruler.
3. His extensive empire (Gen_10:10-12). As a mighty hunter, he founded a powerful kingdom. The founding of the kingdom is shown to have been the consequence or result of his strength in hunting, so that the hunting was most intimately connected with the establishment of the kingdom. Figuratively, he was “a hunter of men” (“a trapper of men by stratagem and force,” Herder), and became a tyrant and oppressor of liberty (cf. Keil, Gen_10:9).
4. His great fame. Recognised as mighty; became a proverb, “It is said,” &c. Expression before the Lord added as if God himself must take note of his skill. Some think that blame is intended, that his notoriety for boldness and wickedness is expressed; something so bad that God could not take his eyes from it. Learn the responsibility of power. Check the tendency to do homage to greatness which takes the form of “hero-worship.” Wisely use and not abuse the endowments entrusted to your care.
“O execrable son, so to aspire
Above his brethren, to himself assuming
Authority usurped, from God not given” [Milton].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Genealogies and their use.
1. In helping Jews to identify their tribes. After return from captivity, all confusion. In prospect of future, needful to revise and reconstruct.
2. In illustrating Jewish History. Here and there names of great importance, and significant of solemn crises of history.
3. In tracing the descent of the Messiah.
1Ch_1:1; 1Ch_1:4; 1Ch_1:28. Three covenants—Adam, Noah, and Abraham. Double names—Abraham, the natural and spiritual name; Jacob, supplanter and prince.
1Ch_1:10. Nimrod’s threefold position.
1. As the pioneer of civilisation;
2. As oppressor of patriarchal liberties;
3. As the instrument of God for the development of the world [Lange].
1Ch_1:19. Peleg, or Division of the earth. Its time, method, design, and commemoration (Gen_10:25).
1Ch_1:24-27 (Genesis 11). Other nations shaken off—line from Shem to Abraham given here.
1. Ishmaelites (1Ch_1:29-31): 12 sons = 12 princes (Gen_17:20).
2. Midianites, children of Keturah (1Ch_1:32-33).
3. Edomites (1Ch_1:36-54, cf. Genesis 36): (a) Kings of Edom (1Ch_1:43-50); (b) Dukes of Edom (1Ch_1:51-54).
1Ch_1:47. Hadad dead (cf. 1Ch_1:43). Notice
1. Changes in earthly governments—“reigned and died.”
2. Uncertainty of human life: (a) In life’s circumstances, “reigned”; (b) In life’s end, “died.”
1Ch_1:1-54. In list we find:
1. Progenitors of a new race.
2. Founders of great nations. Napoleon vowed that he would found a family, though not himself, of great lineage. Many famous men: Adam, the first man; Methuselah, the oldest; Lamech, polygamist, musician, and poet; Enoch, Noah, Nimrod, Abraham, &c. Great events: Creation of man; invention of arts; translation of Enoch; flood of Noah; call of Abraham, &c. Suggested subjects: “The Antiquity of Man”; The Origin of Civilisation; The Division of Nations; The Unity of the Race; The Foundation of the Israelitish People.
“For human weal, Heaven husbands all events” [Young].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
1Ch_1:1. These chronicles have a mission. As no star was useless in the heavens, and as every atom has been created for a purpose, so God would not devote these chapters to a pedigree without design. The end is Christ.
1Ch_1:1. Adam. Every human being is a volume worthy to be studied, and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race [Channing]. No man can think too highly of his nature, or too meanly of himself [Young].
1Ch_1:5-18. Threefold division of nations according to the names Japheth, Ham, and Shem. For part played by the several races in civilisation, cf. Fairbairn’s Studies in Phil. of Religion, and Noah’s prophecy (Gen_9:25-27). “All these sons, the white posterity of Japheth, the yellow and dark sons of Ham, however they may live in temporal separation, are all still God’s children, and brothers to one another.”
1Ch_1:27. Abram. The tenth from Noah, and the twentieth from Adam. The letter H, which was added to the original name of the patriarch, occurs twice in the sacred name of Jehovah. It was added, also, to the name of Sarai. The addition in each case seems to mark a new and closer relation to God. “And I will write upon him the name of my God” [J.H. Blunt] (Gen_17:5). The sacramental character of a name consists in its divine appointment to represent and commemorate and testify some special grace and blessing, and so to be a permanent pledge of its bestowal. Wilkinson, Personal Names, &c.
1Ch_1:44-45. Bela dead, Jobab reigned in his stead. A great hand is sometimes laid even on the fly-wheel of life’s engine [George Macdonald].
“What exhibitions various hath the world
Witness’d of mutability in all
That we account most durable below!
Change is the diet on which all subsist,
Created changeable, and change at last destroys them” [Cowper].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 The writer begins his history with a series of…
Genealogies
The writer begins his history with a series of genealogies, without introduction or heading, which embraces the descendants of Adam to Noah, the descendants of Noah through Japheth, Ham and Shem, the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael and the sons of Keturah, the descendants of Isaac through Esau and the rulers of Edom. These genealogies, which occupy the first nine chapters of this book, and occur frequently throughout the remaining chapters, relate to (a) peoples, (b) localities, (c) families. Those which refer to peoples (1Ch_1:5.) and to localities (1Ch_2:42-43, 1Ch_2:50; 1Ch_7:8) for the most part imply nearness of position, not blood relationship; it is only those which refer to families which are genealogies in the strict sense. Such became extremely important after the exile when descent from Aaron was rigorously required as a condition for the priesthood (Ezr_2:61-62; Neh_7:63-64), and when efforts were made to secure the purity of the Jewish race as a whole against contamination by prohibiting intermarriage with foreigners (Ezra 9, 10 Neh_13:23.). In certain places there are gaps in the lines of descent, some names having fallen out (e.g. 1Ch_2:47; 1Ch_3:22; 1Ch_4:8-9, etc.), whilst others have undergone textual corruption.
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If. The names that are enumerated are taken, with a few unimportant variations, from various chapters of the book of Genesis: see Genesis 5, 10, 11, 16, 21, 25, 36.
5. The sons of Japheth] Where several children of one father are mentioned, the descendants of the son through whom the main line of descent is transmitted are reserved until the collateral branches have been described and dismissed: cp. 1Ch_1:29, 1Ch_1:32, 1Ch_1:35.
38. The sons of Seir] These were aboriginal Horite families (Gen_36:20) who dwelt in Seir (Edom) before the descendants of Esau.
51. And the dukes of Edom were] better, 'and there arose dukes of Edom, to wit, duke Timnah,' etc. The writer implies that after Hadad's death, kings were replaced by dukes.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
I. THE GENEALOGIES
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1. From Adam to the Edomites
CHAPTER 1
1. Adam to Noah (1Ch 1:1-4)
2. The sons of Japheth (1Ch 1:5-7)
3. The sons of Ham (1Ch 1:8-16)
4. The sons of Shem (1Ch 1:17-23)
5. From Shem to Abraham (1Ch 1:24-27)
6. Ishmael and his sons (1Ch 1:28-31)
7. Abraham’s sons from Keturah (1Ch 1:32-33)
8. The sons of Isaac (1Ch 1:34)
9. The sons of Esau (1Ch 1:35-42)
10. The kings and dukes of Edom (1Ch 1:43-54)
The nine chapters of genealogical tables is the largest collection of Hebrew names in the Bible. These names are full of the deepest interest, as they often bear in their meaning a message. We have pointed out this fact many times in the annotations of the preceding books. Here is unquestionably a mine of great wealth for the diligent searcher: many lessons connected with these names have been but little understood. (A good concordance or dictionary of these names and their meaning is needed for such research.) The names given in this chapter are all found in the book of Genesis (chapters 5, 10, 11, 25 and 36.) The ten generations before the flood, ending with Noah begin the list. The descendants of Cain are not mentioned. Then follow the names of the offspring of Noah’s sons, Japheth, Ham and Shem. Fourteen nations descended from Japheth; thirty-one from Ham and twenty-six from Shem. No person is able to trace all these races in history, but He who has recorded their names knows also their history and their wanderings. And so He knows all His creatures. But above all does He know His own people by name.
Shem’s line is followed to Abraham, the father of the nation. The sons of Abraham are mentioned first as Isaac and Ishmael, not in their right order, Ishmael preceding Isaac. The sons of Ishmael are therefore given first, as well as the sons which Abraham had from Keturah. Then follows the statement, “And Abraham begat Isaac. The sons of Isaac: Esau and Israel” (verse 34). Esau’s sons and descendants are given before the sons of Israel; those we find in the second chapter. Then follows the list of the kings and dukes (or chiefs) of Edom. King Jobab (verse 44) is considered by some to be Job and that he ruled in Dinhabah (Gen 36:32).
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 From Adam to the Sons of Keturah
From Adam to the Sons of Keturah
v. 1. Adam, Sheth, Enosh, the members of the families in the direct order of succession only being mentioned,
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v. 2. Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jered,
v. 3. Henoch, who was taken up into heaven by the Lord, Methuselah, the man who reached the highest age recorded in history, Lamech,
v. 4. Noah, with whom the list of the antediluvian patriarchs is brought to an end, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, all three sons of Noah being mentioned as the founders of the world after the Flood.
v. 5. The sons of Japheth: Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras.
v. 6. And the sons of Gomer: Ashchenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah.
v. 7. And the sons of Javan: Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. The seven sons and seven grandsons of Japheth were the founders of strong nations. Cf Gen 10:2-5.
v. 8. The sons of Ham: Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.
v. 9. And the sons of Cush: Sevah, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Raamah, and Sabtecha. And the sons of Raamah: Sheba. and Dedan.
v. 10. And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be mighty upon the earth, the first ruler of a world empire.
v. 11. And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,
v. 12. and Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (of whom came the Philistines,) and Caphthorim. These two were brother nations.
v. 13. And Canaan begat Zidon, his firstborn, and Heth,
v. 14. the Jebusite also, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite,
v. 15. and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite,
v. 16. and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite, all these nations being established afterwards to the southeast and east of the Mediterranean Sea. Cf Gen 10:6-20.
v. 17. The sons of Shem: Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram, and Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Meshech (or Mash), the last four being sons of Aram and grandsons of Shem. These nations were found principally on the Arabian Peninsula and in the valley of the Euphrates and TigrIsaiah
v. 18. And Arphaxad begat Shelah, and Shelah begat Eber.
v. 19. And unto Eber were born two sons; the name of the one was Peleg (division), because in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
v. 20. And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazar-maveth, and Jerah,
v. 21. Hadoram also, and Uzal, and Diklah,
v. 22. and Ebal (or Obal), and Abimael, and Sheba,
v. 23. and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. The nations were found from Asia Minor eastward to India. Cf Gen 10:21-31.
v. 24. Here follows Shem’s line to Abraham: Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah,
v. 25. Eber, Peleg, Reu,
v. 26. Serug, Nahor, Terah,
v. 27. Abram; the same is Abraham, the Lord Himself having changed his name, Gen 17:5.
v. 28. The sons of Abraham: Isaac, the son of promise and bearer of the Messianic prophecy, and Ishmael.
v. 29. These are their generations: The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam,
v. 30. Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Radad, and Tema,
v. 31. Jetur, Naphish, arid Kedemah. These are the sons of Ishmael, Gen 25:12-16. These names are perpetuated in the clans and tribes of the Arabs to the present day, a witness of the fulfilment of God’s promises. He is true and faithful and will not let His words fall to the ground.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 Enosh ... Kenan ... Mahalalel ... Jared ... Enoch…
Enosh ... Kenan ... Mahalalel ... Jared ... Enoch ... Methuselah ... Lamech
These are all names of men. Each man was the father or ancestor of the next man in the list. If your language has a specific way to mark this kind of list, you can use it here. (See: How to Translate Names)
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Lamech. The sons of Noah
If your readers will need to see that Noah was the son of Lamech and your language has a way to mark it, you should use it here.
The sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth
Some versions, including the ULB and UDB, include "The sons of" in order to make it clear that Shem, Ham, and Japheth were brothers to each other and sons of Noah. Otherwise, the reader would assume that each person represented one generation farther away from Noah, their ancestor.
translationWords
Adam
Seth
Enoch
Lamech
Noah
Shem
Ham
Japheth
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 1:1–2:2 The Chronicler begins by showing Israel’s place among…
1:1–2:2 The Chronicler begins by showing Israel’s place among the nations, tracing their line of descent from Adam to Jacob, using material from Genesis.
1:1-4 An overview of the generations between Adam and the sons of Noah (cp. Gen 5:3-32).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.