The Firstborn, the Birthright, and the Exile

The act is Genesis 35:22, when Reuben lay with Bilhah, and Jacob’s dying words turned it against him (Genesis 49:4). “Defiled” is chillel, to profane, the verb for treating holy things as common. The birthright meant a double portion (Deuteronomy 21:17), and Jacob gave it by adopting Ephraim and Manasseh as his own, “as Reuben and Simeon” (Genesis 48:5).

“Prevailed” is gabar, to grow strong. “Chief ruler” is nagid, the title Samuel gives David’s coming kingship in 1 Samuel 13:14, where the King James has “captain”. The verse sets Jacob’s word in Genesis 49:10, the sceptre not departing from Judah, beside the birthright that stayed with Joseph.

“The sons, I say” is the King James picking up a sentence begun in verse 1 and broken off by two verses of explanation. The four names match Genesis 46:9 and Numbers 26:5–6. Hezron and Carmi are also names in Judah’s line (2:5 and 2:7), the same names on different men.

Joel is not said to be the son of any of the four just named, and the join is simply missing. The line then runs straight down, one son at a time. Gog is the only man with that name in Scripture outside Ezekiel 38–39, where it belongs to the invader from the north.

A Reubenite named Baal stands in this line, a reminder that the word, meaning lord or owner, was once an ordinary element in Israelite names. Saul’s son Eshbaal (8:33) was later written Ish-bosheth, with “shame” in place of the god’s name. Baal-meon and Baal-peor lay close to Reuben’s territory.

Tilgath-pilneser is Chronicles’ spelling of Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, who took Gilead in 733–732 BC (2 Kings 15:29). The last man in the line is the one deported, so the genealogy ends in exile twenty verses before the chapter tells of it. Beerah means well, and he is called prince, nasi, the tribe’s own chief.

“When the genealogy of their generations was reckoned” points to a written enrolment, not memory alone. Jeiel carries the title ha-rosh, “the head”, which ranks him above Zechariah, named beside him. The list is recording who led, and in what order, when the count was taken.

Aroer stood on the rim of the Arnon gorge (Deuteronomy 2:36), Moab’s old border. Nebo is the town under the mountain where Moses died. Baal-meon appears on the Mesha stele, where Mesha of Moab, around 840 BC, boasts of building it and of taking Nebo from Israel, so this land changed hands more than once.

The line does not say Reuben reached the Euphrates, only the edge of the desert that runs out toward it, the Syrian steppe. The motive is grazing. Numbers 32:1 says Reuben and Gad had “a very great multitude of cattle” when they first asked for this land, and here the herds have grown again.

The Hagarites, or Hagrites, take their name, it seems, from Hagar, and Psalm 83:6 lists the Hagarenes beside Moab and the Ishmaelites among Israel’s enemies. “In the days of Saul” places this push east in the generation before David. Taking over tents means they occupied herders’ ground, not walled towns.

Salchah marks the far eastern edge of Bashan (Deuteronomy 3:10), probably modern Salkhad in the Hauran. Joshua 13 gave Bashan to Manasseh and Gilead to Gad, so finding Gad this far north suggests that tribal borders on the east side moved over time.

“The next” is ha-mishneh, the second in rank, so this is a list of office, not order of birth. The Joel here is Gadite, not the Reubenite of verse 4. Shaphat, “he judges”, is placed in Bashan by name, as if he held a separate district of it.

Seven brothers are totalled at the end, “seven”, a check on the count as the lists in Genesis 46 provide. Michael, “who is like God?”, is a question used as a name. Heber and Sheba are names that recur across several tribes, which is why these registers take care to give each man his family.

Abihail’s pedigree runs back eight generations to Buz. A man called Gilead stands in it, sharing the region’s name, as the Manassite Gilead does in Numbers 26:29. Buz is also the name of Nahor’s son (Genesis 22:21) and the clan of Elihu the Buzite (Job 32:2), eastern names for an eastern tribe.

Ahi means my brother, and he is marked as head of the fathers’ house, the one to whom the others traced their standing. His grandfather Abdiel is “servant of God”. Guni is also the name of a son of Naphtali (Genesis 46:24), a family name travelling between tribes.

This Sharon is not the coastal plain west of Samaria but pasture east of Jordan, perhaps the Sharon named on the Mesha stele. “Suburbs” is migrash, the open grazing land ringing a town; in 1611 “suburbs” meant simply the ground just outside the walls. Gilead and Bashan here are regions whose borders ran into each other.

This is the only time Chronicles names Jeroboam II, a northern king it otherwise passes over in silence. Jotham of Judah is named first although Jeroboam reigned earlier, which puts the Davidic king at the head even in a note about a northern tribe’s records. “Reckoned by genealogies” is again the enrolment word of 4:33.

Forty four thousand seven hundred and sixty is not the census of Numbers 26, where Reuben and Gad alone came to over eighty four thousand, so this is a separate muster. Joshua 4:13 had about forty thousand of these eastern tribes cross Jordan ready for war. To “shoot with bow” is literally to tread the bow, stringing it underfoot.

Jetur and Nephish are sons of Ishmael (1:31 and Genesis 25:15), so the Hagarites fought alongside Ishmaelite tribes. Jetur gave its name to Ituraea, Philip’s territory in Luke 3:1. Nodab is not named anywhere else, a tribe remembered only by the war in which it was defeated.

“He was intreated” is the verb used when the LORD answered Isaac’s prayer for Rebekah (Genesis 25:21) and when he heard David for the land after the plague (2 Samuel 24:25). “Cried” is za’aq, the cry of people in distress. “Put their trust” is batach, to lean on something with one’s whole weight.

The only comparable inventory is the Midianite spoil of Numbers 31:32–35, which also counts sheep, asses and people. Camels come first here, the wealth of desert tribes, and outnumber the asses twenty five to one. “Of men” is literally “souls of men”, nefesh adam, the word Genesis 2:7 uses of the man made a living soul.

“The war was of God” echoes David’s words to Goliath, “the battle is the LORD’s” (1 Samuel 17:47). “Dwelt in their steads” means they took the defeated people’s place, as the Simeonites “dwelt in their rooms” in 4:41. The same phrase of displacement is used in both chapters, and exile will reverse it.

Deuteronomy 3:9 explains the three names: Hermon, which “the Sidonians call Sirion; and the Amorites call it Shenir”. Baal-hermon is the shrine town at its foot. The half tribe spreads north until the tallest mountain in the land stops it, the widest reach of any tribe in these lists.

“Famous men” is anshe shemot, men of names, the phrase of Genesis 6:4, “men of renown”, used of the mighty men before the flood. Seven heads are listed with no ancestry at all, and Jeremiah here is a Manassite chief centuries before the prophet. Their reputation is given in full; their faithfulness is taken up in the next verse.

“Transgressed” is ma’al, the key word Chronicles uses for unfaithfulness. It names Achan’s sin in 2:7, Saul’s in 10:13, and Judah’s in 9:1, the reason for its exile. “Went a whoring” pictures the covenant as a marriage betrayed, the language of Hosea, who preached to the north in these same decades.

Pul was the name Tiglath-pileser used as king of Babylon. Two names stand here with a singular verb, “he carried them away”, which reads as though Chronicles knew they were one king. Halah, Habor and Gozan are where 2 Kings 17:6 sends the exiles of Samaria. The phrase “stirred up the spirit” returns in 2 Chronicles 36:22, when God stirs Cyrus to send exiles home.