1 Chronicles 7:33

Principal men in their tribe, and respective families: choice and mighty men of valour; these were some selected from others, being eminent for their courage and valour: chief of the princes; or chief princes; the Vulgate Latin version is, dukes of dukes, they were heads of their fathers' families: [and] the number throughout the genealogy that were apt to war, and to battle, [was] twenty and six thousand [men]; that is, in the days of David, 1 Chronicles 7:4, this was the number, not of their chief men, nor of all the people in the tribe, but of their militia.   John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible. 1 Chronicles 8:1 INTRODUCTION TO 1 CHRONICLES 8 In this chapter the genealogy of the tribe of Benjamin is reconsidered, and several of the principal men and families in it are taken notice of, which were not before; or a further account is given of them, as of the sons and grandsons of Benjamin, 1 Chronicles 8:1, of Ehud, 1 Chronicles 8:5, of Shaharaim, 1 Chronicles 8:8, of Elpaal and Beriah, 1 Chronicles 8:12 of Shimhi, 1 Chronicles 8:19, of Shashak, 1 Chronicles 8:22, of Jeroham, 1 Chronicles 8:26, of Jehiel the father of Gibeon, 1 Chronicles 8:28, of Ner, and particularly Saul, 1 Chronicles 8:33 and of Jonathan, and his posterity, 1 Chronicles 8:34. Ver. 1. Now Benjamin begat Bela his firstborn,.... See 1 Chronicles 7:6.

7:1-40 Genealogies. - Here is no account either of Zebulun or Dan. We can assign no reason why they only should be omitted; but it is the disgrace of the tribe of Dan, that idolatry began in that colony which fixed in Laish, and called it Dan, Jud 18 and there one of the golden calves was set up by Jeroboam. Dan is omitted, Re 7. Men become abominable when they forsake the worship of the true God, for any creature object.

Verse 33. - Nothing, except what follows in the next verses, is known of the three sons of Japhlet given in this verse. In them we reach the fourth generation from Asher. The generations then travel forward through Helem, presumably a third brother of Japhlet, passing the sons of Shamer, or Shomer, presumably Japhlet's second brother. 1 Chronicles 7:33

21. whom the men of Gath … slew, &c.—This interesting little episode gives us a glimpse of the state of Hebrew society in Egypt; for the occurrence narrated seems to have taken place before the Israelites left that country. The patriarch Ephraim was then alive, though he must have arrived at a very advanced age; and the Hebrew people, at all events those of them who were his descendants, still retained their pastoral character. It was in perfect consistency with the ideas and habits of Oriental shepherds that they should have made a raid on the neighboring tribe of the Philistines for the purpose of plundering their flocks. For nothing is more common among them than hostile incursions on the inhabitants of towns, or on other nomad tribes with whom they have no league of amity. But a different view of the incident is brought out, if, instead of "because," we render the Hebrew particle "when" they came down to take their cattle, for the tenor of the context leads rather to the conclusion that "the men of Gath" were the aggressors, who, making a sudden foray on the Ephraimite flocks, killed the shepherds including several of the sons of Ephraim. The calamity spread a deep gloom around the tent of their aged father, and was the occasion of his receiving visits of condolence from his distant relatives, according to the custom of the East, which is remarkably exemplified in the history of Job (Job 2:11; compare Joh 11:19).

The sons of Beriah, Heber and Malchiel, are also to be found in Genesis 46:17 and Numbers 26:45 as the heads of two families; but the further statement, "he (i.e., Malchiel) the father of Birzavith," is found only here. How ברזות, the Kethibh, is to be pronounced, cannot be with certainty determined. Gesen. in Thes. p. 239 makes it בּרזות, and considers the word to be the name of a woman; Bertheau, on the contrary conjectures that it is a compound of בר equals בּאר and זית, "well of the olive-tree," and so the name of a place. In 1 Chronicles 7:32-34 the descendants of Heber are enumerated in three generations, which are mentioned nowhere else. In 1 Chronicles 7:32 we have four sons and one daughter. The name יפלט is not to be connected with יפלטי, Joshua 16:3 , "because a family of Asher is not to be sought for in the neighbourhood there referred to" (Berth.). In 1 Chronicles 7:33 we have four sons of Japhlet, and in 1 Chronicles 7:34 the sons of his brother Shemer. It is somewhat remarkable that שׁומר, 1 Chronicles 7:32 , is called here שׁמר. אחי is not an appellative, but a proper name, as the ו before the following name shows; cf. another Ahi in 1 Chronicles 5:15 . For יחבּה we should read וחבּה.

For, in the first place, the following words, "And the name of the second (is) Zelophehad," do not suit the proposed reading. Berth. must here alter השּׁני into אהיו (the name of his brother). But even after this alteration, the mention of the brother of Machir is not suitable to the context; and moreover Zelophehad was not a true brother, but only a nephew of Machir, the son of his brother Hepher; cf. Numbers 26:33 ; Numbers 27:1 . And besides this, according to the concluding formula, "These are the sons of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh" ( 1 Chronicles 7:17 ), we should expect to find in 1 Chronicles 7:15 , 1 Chronicles 7:16 , not merely sons or descendants of Machir, but rather descendants of Gilead. We therefore hold the statement of 1 Chronicles 7:15 , "And the name of the second if Zelophehad, and Zelophehad had (only) daughters," to be correct and beyond criticism, and the first part of 1 Chronicles 7:15 to be corrupt and defective; and conjecture that a son of Gilead's was mentioned in it, to whose name the words, "And the name of the second," etc., belonged. This son who was mentioned in the text, which has been handed down to us only in a defective state, was probably the Ashriel mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:14 , a son of Gilead, whose descent from Machir was given more in detail in the corrupt and consequently meaningless first half of 1 Chronicles 7:15 .