1 Chronicles 1:46

28-54 The genealogy is from hence confined to the posterity of Abraham. Let us take occasion from reading these lists of names, to think of the multitudes that have gone through this world, have done their parts in it, and then quitted it. As one generation, even of sinful men, passes away, another comes. Ec 1:4; Nu 32:14, and will do so while the earth remains. Short is our passage through time into eternity. May we be distinguished as the Lord's people.

(46) Hadad. —The name of a Syrian deity, a form of the sun-god. (Comp. the royal titles, Ben-hadad and Hadadezer, 1Chronicles 18:3 , and the Note on 2Kings 5:18 .) Hadad is the same as Dadi, a Syrian title of Rimmon. Perhaps the classical Attis is equivalent to Dadis. The cry of the vintagers ( hēdād ) seems to show that Hadad, like Bacchus, was regarded as the giver of the grapes ( Isaiah 16:9-10 ). Which smote Midian.—A glimpse of the restless feuds which prevailed from time immemorial between these tribes and peoples of kindred origin. Like the judges of Israel, the kings of Edom seem to have been raised to their position owing to special emergencies. The field of Moab.—That is, the open country. Avith.—Like Dinhabah, and Pai, and Masretah, unknown beyond this passage. In the Hebrew of Chron. it is spelt, Ayuth; in Genesis 36 Awith. The letters w and y have been transposed in our text.

37. Reuel—a powerful branch of the great Aeneze tribe, the Rowalla Arabs. Shammah—the great tribe Beni Shammar. In the same way, the names of the other kings and dukes are traced in the modern tribes of Arabia. But it is unnecessary to mention any more of these obscure nomads, except to notice that Jobab (1Ch 1:44), one of the kings of Edom, is considered to be Job, and that his seat was in the royal city of Dinahab (Ge 36:32; 1Ch 1:43), identified with O'Daeb, a well-known town in the center of Al Dahna, a great northern desert in the direction of Chaldea and the Euphrates [Forster].

The kings of Edom before the introduction of the kingship into Israel. - This is a verbally exact repetition of Genesis 36:31-39 , except that the introductory formula, Genesis 36:32 , "and there reigned in Edom," which is superfluous after the heading, and the addition "ben Achbor" ( Genesis 36:39 ) in the account of the death of Baal-hanan in 1 Chronicles 1:50 , are omitted; the latter because even in Genesis, where mention is made of the death of other kings, the name of the father of the deceased king is not repeated. Besides this, the king called Hadad (v. 46f.), and the city פּעי (v. 50), are in Genesis Hadar ( Genesis 36:35 .) and פּעוּ ( Genesis 36:39 ). The first of these variations has arisen from a transcriber's error, the other from a different pronunciation of the name.

A somewhat more important divergence, however, appears, when in Genesis 36:39 the death of the king last named is not mentioned, because he was still alive in the time of Moses; while in the Chronicle, on the contrary, not only of him also is it added, הדד ויּמת, because at the time of the writing of the Chronicle he had long been dead, but the list of the names of the territories of the phylarchs, which in Genesis follows the introductory formula שׁמות alum ואלּה, is here connected with the enumeration of the kings by ויּהיוּ, "Hadad died, and there were chiefs of Edom." This may mean that, in the view of the chronicler, the reign of the phylarchs took the place of the kingship after the death of the last king, but that interpretation is by no means necessary. The ו consec. may also merely express the succession of thought, only connecting logically the mention of the princes with the enumeration of the kings; or it may signify that, besides the kings, there were also tribal princes who could rule the land and people. The contents of the register which follows require that ויּהיוּ should be so understood.