1 Chronicles 1:37

The sons of Reuel; Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Timna - In Genesis 36:11, Eliphaz has no son Timna; but he has a concubine of the name, who is the mother of Amalek, and conjectured to be Lotan's sister 1 Chronicles 1:39. The best explanation is, that the writer has in his mind rather the tribes descended from Eliphaz than his actual children, and as there was a place, Timna, inhabited by his "dukes" (1 Chronicles 1:51; compare Genesis 35:40), he puts the race which lived there among his "sons."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

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].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The sons of Esau,.... The firstborn of Isaac; his posterity are named in this and the two following verses, as in Genesis 36:1 only it should be observed, that Timna, 1 Chronicles 1:36 is not the name of a man, but was the concubine of Eliphaz, the eldest son of Esau, and the mother of Amalek, Genesis 36:12, and so in the Arabic version it is read,"and Timna, which was the concubine of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, bare him Amalek;''and so the Alexandrian copy of the Septuagint.

Geneva Study Bible

The sons of Reuel; Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

1 Chronicles 1:37

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

To Reuel, the son of Esau by Bashemath, four sons were born, whose names correspond to those in Genesis 36:13. These ten (6 + 4) grandsons of Esau were, with his three sons by Aholibamah (Jeush, Jaalam, and Korah, Genesis 36:35), the founders of the thirteen tribes of the posterity of Esau. They are called in Genesis 36:15 עשׂו בּני אלּוּפי, heads of tribes (φύλαρχοι) of the children of Esau, i.e., of the Edomites, but are all again enumerated, Gen. 3615-19, singly.

(Note: The erroneous statement of Bertheau, therefore, that "according to Genesis the Edomite people was also divided into twelve tribes, five tribes from Eliphaz, four tribes from Reuel, and the three tribes which were referred immediately to Aholibamah the wife of Esau. It is distinctly stated that Amalek was connected with these twelve tribes only very loosely, for he appears as the son of the concubine of Eliphaz," - must be in so far corrected, that neither the Chronicle nor Genesis knows anything of the twelve tribes of the Edomites. Both books, on the contrary, mention thirteen grandsons of Esau, and these thirteen grandsons are, according to the account of Genesis, the thirteen phylarchs of the Edomite people, who are distributed according to the three wives of Esau; so that the thirteen families may be grouped together in three tribes. Nor is Amalek connected only in a loose way with the other tribes in Genesis: he is, on the contrary, not only included in the number of the sons of Adah in Genesis 36:12, probably because Timna stood in the same relationship to Adah the wife of Esau as Hagar held to Sarah, but also is reckoned in Genesis 36:16 among the Allufim of the sons of Eliphaz. Genesis therefore enumerates not five but six tribes from Eliphaz; and the chronicler has not "completely obliterated the twelvefold division," as Bertheau further maintains, but the thirteen sons and grandsons of Esau who became phylarchs are all introduced; and the only thing which is omitted in reference to them is the title עשׂו בּני אלּוּפי, it being unnecessary in a genealogical enumeration of the descendants of Esau.)