1 Chronicles 1

1 Chronicles 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.

1 Chronicles 1:28 . The sons of Abraham — All nations but the seed of Abraham are already shaken off from this genealogy. Not that we conclude, no particular persons of any other nation but this found favour with God; multitudes will be brought to heaven out of every nation, and we may hope there were many, very many people in the world, whose names were in the book of life, though they did not spring from the loins of Abraham.

Verses 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. 1 Chronicles 1:1