1 Chronicles 1:42

The sons of Ezer; Bilhan, and Zavan, and Jakan. The sons of Dishan; Uz, and Aran.

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

Amram (rather Hamran), and Hemdan (margin), differ in the original by the same letter only which marks the difference in 1 Chronicles 1:30.

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

And the sons of Seir,.... This man and his posterity were not of the race of Esau, but are mentioned because they were a family into which Esau, and a son of his, married, and whose possessions he and his obtained. The account from hence, to the end of 1 Chronicles 1:42 is the same with Genesis 36:20, with some little variation of names.

Geneva Study Bible

The sons of Ezer; Bilhan, and Zavan, and Jakan. The sons of Dishan; Uz, and Aran.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 42-50. - G. LIST OF KINGS OF EDOM. These verses contain a list of kings who reigned in Edom, during a period expressly notified as anterior to the institution of kings in Israel. Some further point of practical use than has been yet ascertained may lie in the preservation of these snatches of Edom's history. Something surely hangs on the emphatic but otherwise gratuitous statement, that kings were unknown in Israel when this line reigned in Edom. It may turn out to cover the fulfilment of some obscure point of prophecy, or to subserve some important chronological purpose; but wedged in as it is, it cannot be permitted to count for nothing. That it stands in identical words in Genesis 36:31 increases not a little the attention to be paid to it. It has hence been asserted far too dogmatically, as by Spinoza, that the Book of Genesis was no work of Moses; or again, that the passage, in the course of some transcription of manuscripts, had found its way from Chronicles, through a marginal note, at last into the text of Genesis (see Kennicott). But these positions are only forced by the assumption that kings must have reigned in Israel before the sentence could have been written, which is an unnecessary assumption. Kings had been promised to Jacob (Genesis 35:11), as among his posterity, and had been prophesied of by Moses (Deuteronomy 28:36). It may have been that Edom, secure in her kings for generations, had been wont to make her boast of them. in comparison of and in presence of her neighbours, and the remark may have thence originated. Lastly, it has been correctly pointed out that the structure of the sentence in the original does not at all necessitate the suggestion (of which in the English Version there is confessedly the appearance), that kings had already been in Israel. At the same time, too great stress must not be laid upon this, for the slight alteration of translation that would suit the time for Genesis, would throw it out again for our text here, and yet the words of the original are identical. These kings are eight in number; the parentage or the land of each is given. It is to be noticed that the line of royalty is not hereditary, and that several dukes, or heads of tribes, or princes of districts, rule under the king. The names, whether of persons or places, agree in the Authorized Version as they occur here and in Genesis 36:31-39, except that Saul is here spelt Shaul, and that we have here Hadad and Pai for Hadar and Pan there. These two differences are occasioned by the Hebrew text, and are the only differences between the two Hebrew texts, except that חושָׁם here is given חֻשָׁם there, and that the incorrect spelling here of עֲיִות is found right (עֲוִית) in Genesis. The superfluous statement, Hadad died also, which begins our fifty-first verse, is not found in Genesis. In the Septuagint the variations between the two places are greater, as well as those from the Hebrew text in either place. Thus we have Asom, Gethaim, Sebla, Roboth, Balaennor, Achobor, Adad, here, for Asom, Getthaim, Samada, Robboth, Ballenon, Achobor, Arad, there. There is also an entire omission here of the name of the wife of the last king, with those of her mother and grandmother, all of which are given in the passage of Genesis, as found in the Hebrew text. 1 Chronicles 1:42

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people. For this reason, in Genesis 36:20-30 the tribal princes of the Seirite inhabitants of the land are noticed; and in our chapter also, 1 Chronicles 1:38, the names of these seven שׂעיר בּני, and in 1 Chronicles 1:39-42 of their sons (eighteen men and one woman, Timna), are enumerated, where only Aholibamah the daughter of Anah, also mentioned in Genesis 36:25, is omitted. The names correspond, except in a few unimportant points, which have been already discussed in the Commentary on Genesis. The inhabitants of Mount Seir consisted, then, after the immigration of Esau and his descendants, of twenty tribes under a like number of phylarchs, thirteen of whom were Edomite, of the family of Esau, and seven Seirite, who are called in the Chronicle שׂעיר בּני, and in Genesis חרי, Troglodytes, inhabitants of the land, that is, aborigines.

If we glance over the whole posterity of Abraham as they are enumerated in 1 Chronicles 1:28-42, we see that it embraces (a) his sons Ishmael and Isaac, and Isaac's sons Israel and Esau (together 4 persons); (b) the sons of Ishmael, or the tribes descended from Ishmael (12 names); (c) the sons and grandsons of Keturah (13 persons or chiefs); (d) the thirteen phylarchs descended from Esau; (e) the seven Seirite phylarchs, and eighteen grandsons and a granddaughter of Seir (26 persons). We have thus in all the names of sixty-eight persons, and to them we must add Keturah, and Timna the concubine of Eliphaz, before we get seventy persons. But these seventy must not by any means be reckoned as seventy tribes, which is the result Bertheau arrives at by means of strange calculations and errors in numbers.

(Note: That the Chronicle gives no countenance to this view appears from Bertheau's calculation of the 70 tribes: from Ishmael, 12; from Keturah, 13; from Isaac, 2; from Esau, 5 sons and 7 grandchildren of Eliphaz (Timna, 1 Chronicles 1:36, being included in the number), and 4 grandsons by Reuel - 16 in all; from Seir 7 sons, and from these 20 other descendants, 27 in all, which makes the sum of 70. But the biblical text mentions only 19 other descendants of Seir, so that only 26 persons came from Seir, and the sum is therefore 12 + 13 + 2 + 16 + 26 equals 69. But we must also object to other points in Bertheau's reckoning: (1) the arbitrary change of Timna into a grandchild of Esau; (2) the arbitrary reckoning of Esau and Israel ( equals Jacob) without Ishmael. Was Esau, apart from his sons, the originator of a people? Had the author of the Chronicle cherished the purpose attributed to him by Bertheau, of bringing the lists of names handed down by tradition to the round or significant number 70, he would certainly in 1 Chronicles 1:33 not have omitted the three peoples descended from Dedan (Genesis 25:3), as he might by these names have completed the number 70 without further trouble.)

Upon this conclusion he founds his hypothesis, that as the three branches of the family of Noah are divided into seventy peoples (which, as we have seen before is not the case), so also the three branches of the family of Abraham are divided into seventy tribes; and in this again he finds a remarkable indication "that even in the time of the chronicler, men sought by means of numbers to bring order and consistency into the lists of names handed down by tradition from the ancient times."