Prayer, Skilled Hands, and the Search for Room

These five are not brothers. Pharez is Judah’s son, Hezron his grandson, Hur a descendant of Hezron through Caleb (2:19), and Shobal is Hur’s son (2:50). “Sons” here means a line read downward. Carmi is a puzzle, since he belongs to Zerah’s branch in 2:7, and many take the name as a slip for Chelubai, Caleb.

Reaiah is probably the Haroeh of 2:52, a son of Shobal with the name spelled differently. The Zorathites take their name from Zorah, the town in the lowland where Manoah lived and Samson was born (Judges 13:2). The line runs to Ahumai and Lahad and stops, as though that was as far as the record went.

The Hebrew reads awkwardly, “these were the father of Etam”, and the Greek has “these are the sons of Etam”, which suggests a word dropped out. Etam lay near Bethlehem and was one of the towns Rehoboam fortified (2 Chronicles 11:6). Jezreel is a man here, sharing his name with the famous valley and city in the north.

“Father of” a town means its founder or chief, so Hur stands at the head of Bethlehem itself. Ephratah is Caleb’s wife (2:19) and also an old name for Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), and the two meanings lie on top of each other. Hushah is the home of Sibbechai the Hushathite, one of David’s champions (11:29).

Ashur was introduced in 2:24 as a son born to Hezron’s widow Abiah after his father’s death. Tekoa, the town he heads, sent the wise woman to David (2 Samuel 14:2) and was the home of the herdsman Amos (Amos 1:1). Its founder is the first man in this chapter said to have two wives.

Verse 5 named Helah first, but Naarah’s sons come first, and the order of the wives is reversed as their children are listed. Naarah is simply the Hebrew word for a girl or young woman. Haahashtari carries the definite article, “the Ahashtarite”, which makes it look like the name of a clan rather than a single son.

Helah’s three sons close the account of Ashur’s house. Ethnan is spelled like the Hebrew word ethnan, a fee or payment, the word used for a harlot’s hire in Deuteronomy 23:18, though nothing suggests the name was meant that way. Zereth and Jezoar appear nowhere else in Scripture.

Coz arrives with no father, and nothing in the text says how he joins Ashur’s family or anyone else’s. The phrase “the families of Aharhel” shifts from single sons to whole clans in mid-sentence. Anub and Zobebah are otherwise unknown, preserved here only as a link in someone’s claim to belong.

The name Jabez, Ya’bets, is the Hebrew word for pain, otseb, with two of its letters swapped, so it sounds like sorrow almost spelled backward. “More honourable” is nikbad, from the root for weight, heavy with standing. A town called Jabez, home to families of scribes, appears in 2:55, though the text never connects it to this man.

“Oh that” renders the Hebrew im, “if”, and the sentence never finishes: “If thou wilt bless me…”, with the promise that should follow left unsaid, like a vow broken off. “Bless me indeed” doubles the verb, as in Genesis 22:17, “in blessing I will bless thee”. He calls on the God of Israel, the patriarch’s own name.

Chelub is a variant of the name Caleb, but his brother Shuah ties him to a different family from the Caleb of chapter 2. His son’s name, Mehir, is the ordinary Hebrew word for a price or payment. Eshton, the grandson, is the only one of the three who carries the line further.

Beth-rapha, “house of Rapha”, is a household name standing where a person’s name should be, which suggests the list is naming clans. Ir-nahash means city of the serpent, or of copper, since nahash and nechoshet share their letters, and copper-working in the Arabah has been suggested for it. The Greek reads Rechab for the unknown Rechah.

Othniel is the first judge, who delivered Israel from Cushan-rishathaim (Judges 3:9–11). Judges 1:13 calls him the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, and he won Caleb’s daughter Achsah by taking Kirjath-sepher. His son’s name, Hathath, means terror. The Greek adds Meonothai at the end of the verse, which the next verse needs.

This Joab is not David’s general. Charashim is the plural of the word for a craftsman in wood, stone or metal, and Nehemiah 11:35 lists a “valley of craftsmen” beside Lod and Ono, resettled after the exile. Ophrah here is a person, sharing a name with Gideon’s town in Manasseh.

Caleb son of Jephunneh is the spy who stood with Joshua against the ten (Numbers 14:6–9), a different man from Caleb son of Hezron in chapter 2. Numbers 32:12 calls him a Kenizzite, so a grandson named Kenaz keeps the clan name alive. The Hebrew’s “and Kenaz” dangles, as though a name before it has dropped out.

Jehaleleel arrives unattached. Ziph is the town in the wilderness of Judah where David hid, and whose people twice told Saul where he was (1 Samuel 23:19 and 26:1). Ziph and Ziphah are the same name in masculine and feminine form, the kind of pairing that often marks a town and its daughter settlement.

This Ezra is spelled with a final he, a different name from the scribe Ezra. The sentence “and she bare Miriam” has no woman to refer to, and most commentators think the end of verse 18 belongs here, making Bithiah the mother. Eshtemoa is one of the towns David sent spoil to from Ziklag (1 Samuel 30:28).

Jehudijah carries the article in Hebrew, “the Judahite woman”, and set beside Bithiah it may mean Mered’s Jewish wife as against his Egyptian one. Bithiah means daughter of Yah, a striking name for Pharaoh’s daughter. Socho is where the Philistines camped before Goliath came out (1 Samuel 17:1), and Zanoah was resettled after the exile (Nehemiah 11:30).

The Hebrew is tangled, and even Hodiah’s sex is uncertain in the versions. Keilah is the lowland town David rescued from the Philistines, whose people would have handed him over to Saul (1 Samuel 23:1–12). The Maachathite ties Eshtemoa to Maacah, a small Aramean kingdom whose name also marks clans that married into Israel.

Shimon is not Simeon, whose tribe begins at verse 24. Amnon shares his name with David’s firstborn, and Ben-hanan means son of the gracious one. Ishi’s two sons are Zoheth and Ben-zoheth, “son of Zoheth”, which reads less like a second brother than like a grandson folded into the same line.

Shelah is the third son of Judah, the one withheld from Tamar (Genesis 38:11 and 14). His firstborn is named Er after the brother the LORD slew, so the dead son’s name comes back. The fine linen is buts, byssus, the fabric of the temple veil in 2 Chronicles 3:14, worked by a house that sounds like a guild.

“Had the dominion in Moab” uses the verb ba’al, which can also mean to marry, and the Talmud (Bava Batra 91b) read Joash and Saraph as Mahlon and Chilion, who took Moabite wives. The Latin turned Jashubi-lehem into “who returned to Bethlehem”. “These are ancient things” is an open admission that the book is copying old records.

“Among plants and hedges” translates two place names, Netaim and Gederah, meaning plantations and walls or folds. Potters working “with the king for his work” calls to mind the thousands of jar handles stamped lmlk, “belonging to the king”, dug up across Judah from Hezekiah’s time, though linking these potters to those jars is an inference.

Simeon’s sons match Numbers 26:12–13 closely, with Jarib standing for Jachin. Genesis 46:10 gives six sons, including Ohad, who never appears again and founded no family. It also calls Shaul “the son of a Canaanitish woman”, a detail this list does not repeat.

Mibsam and Mishma are also the names of two of Ishmael’s sons in 1:29–30 and Genesis 25:13–14. Their turning up in Simeon’s line has led scholars to suggest that Simeon, living far south near the desert, absorbed Ishmaelite groups. That is an inference from shared names, not something the text states.

The line runs straight down, one son to each generation, to reach Shimei, the man the next verse wants to talk about. Zacchur means remembered. This Shimei shares his name with the Benjamite who cursed David and several others in these books, a common name among many.

The shortfall against Judah shows in the two census counts. Simeon numbered 59,300 men of war in Numbers 1:23 and only 22,200 in Numbers 26:14, the steepest fall of any tribe. Moses’ blessing in Deuteronomy 33 leaves Simeon out entirely, and here Simeon is measured against the tribe that swallowed it.

The town list follows Joshua 19:2–8, where Simeon’s inheritance is said to lie “within the inheritance of the children of Judah”. Beer-sheba is Abraham’s well of the oath (Genesis 21:31). Moladah and Hazar-shual were both resettled by returning exiles (Nehemiah 11:26–27), so these names were still living places when Chronicles was written.

Joshua 19:3–4 spells these Balah and Eltolad, and Chronicles drops the El from the front of Tolad. Bilhah happens to share its name with Rachel’s maid, the mother of Dan and Naphtali, though there is no sign of a link. Ezem was a town in the dry south, the Negev.

Hormah means destruction, named after Israel devoted the Canaanite towns there to the ban (Numbers 21:3). Ziklag was given to David by Achish of Gath when he was an outlaw, and 1 Samuel 27:6 adds that it has belonged to the kings of Judah ever since. Bethuel is Joshua’s Bethul.

Beth-marcaboth means house of chariots and Hazar-susim enclosure of horses, names that sound like depots for a king’s chariotry; some connect them with Solomon’s chariot cities (1 Kings 9:19), an inference from the names. “Unto the reign of David” implies that after David these towns ceased to be counted as Simeon’s.

Joshua 19:7 names four cities, Ain, Remmon, Ether and Ashan. Chronicles counts five, adding Etam and Tochen, and if Ain and Rimmon are one place, the En-rimmon of Nehemiah 11:29, the count shifts again. Ashan was also given to the Levites (6:59), one town claimed by two lists.

Baal is shortened from Baalath-beer in Joshua 19:8. “Their genealogy” is hityachsam, the enrolment by descent, a word found almost only in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. Settlement and genealogy are named together, as if a family’s towns were part of its pedigree.

A roll of thirteen chiefs begins here and runs to verse 37. Jamlech means “he makes king”. This Amaziah is not the king of Judah, and Joshah is known only as his son. Meshobab, first on the list, is given no father at all.

Jehu receives three generations of ancestry, back to Asiel, whose name means made by God. He is not the king of Israel who wiped out Ahab’s house. Joel, listed beside him, gets no ancestry, and the pedigrees in this roll are uneven, full for some men and absent for others.

Seven names stand in one verse without a single father. Several are built from the divine name or from prayer: Elioenai means “toward Yah are my eyes”, and Jeshohaiah and Asaiah both carry Yah. Jaakobah is a form of Jacob, and Benaiah shares his name with the captain of David’s bodyguard.

Ziza, the last of the thirteen, is given the longest pedigree, five generations back to Shemaiah. A man whose ancestry is written out this far is usually one whose descendants had reason to prove it. Shimri means my watchman.

“Mentioned by their names” is literally “coming by names”, an idiom repeated in verse 41, “written by name”. “Princes” is nesi’im, the title of the tribal chiefs who brought offerings in Numbers 7. “The house of their fathers” is the extended clan, the unit that was growing too large for its pasture.

The Greek reads Gerar for Gedor, which fits Simeon’s south-western country better than any Gedor known in Judah. Gerar is where Abraham and Isaac lived among the Philistines and Isaac’s herdsmen quarrelled over wells (Genesis 26:17–22). The search is for grazing, the ordinary pressure of herders in the dry south.

“They of Ham” means peoples descended from Ham, Canaan, Egypt and Cush in Genesis 10:6. 2 Chronicles 14:9–15 has Cushites near Gerar in Asa’s day, with tents of cattle. “Quiet” is the word Judges 18:7 and 27 uses of Laish, a people quiet and secure, just before the Danites fell on it.

“Habitations” renders ha-me’unim, which many read as “the Meunim”, a people Uzziah fought (2 Chronicles 26:7). “Destroyed them utterly” is the verb of the ban, charam, used of Jericho and Amalek. “Unto this day” means the source was written while the settlers still held the land, before Assyria and Babylon ended it.

Mount Seir is the highland of Edom, south-east of the Dead Sea. The number, five hundred, marks a war band, not a migration of the whole tribe. This Ishi is a Simeonite, not the Judahite of verse 20, and his four sons lead the expedition together.

Amalek survived Saul’s campaign in 1 Samuel 15 and David’s raid in 1 Samuel 30:17, when four hundred young men escaped on camels. Exodus 17:16 promised war with Amalek from generation to generation. This is the last Amalekite remnant in the historical books, unless Haman the Agagite in Esther is counted.