Households, Fighting Men, and a Daughter's Buildings

Genesis 46:13 calls the third son Job; Numbers 26:24 and this verse call him Jashub. Tola and Puah turn up again as names in Judges 10:1, “Tola the son of Puah”, a judge of Issachar, the tribe’s founding names reused. Tola is the word for the worm that gave crimson dye.

Numbers 26:25 counted all Issachar at 64,300. Here Tola’s clan alone musters 22,600 in David’s time. Shemuel is Samuel’s name on an Issacharite. “In their generations” means each family was counted as a separate unit, generation by generation, not all at once.

The verse says “five” but names four sons of Izrahiah, so the count includes Izrahiah himself with his sons. Izrahiah means the LORD shines forth, from the same root as Zerah and the Ezrahite of the psalm titles. “Chief men” means all five were heads of households.

“Bands of soldiers” is gedude tsava, raiding troops, the word used for the Amalekite “troop” David pursued in 1 Samuel 30:8. Issachar’s numbers climb through the passage, 22,600, then 36,000, then 87,000, each figure a different group, not a running total.

Eighty seven thousand for the whole tribe, against 54,400 in Numbers 1:29 and 64,300 in Numbers 26:25. Chronicles gives Issachar two reputations, this one for numbers and another in 12:32, where its men “had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do”.

Genesis 46:21 gives Benjamin ten sons, Numbers 26:38–39 five, and 8:1–2 five again, all different lists. Jediael appears only here. Zebulun is missing from these chapters entirely, and some scholars think verses 6–11 were once Zebulun’s entry and were later read as Benjamin’s, an inference from the gap.

Ezbon is the name of a son of Gad in Genesis 46:16, and 8:3 gives Bela an entirely different set of sons. The count, twenty two thousand and thirty four, is precise down to the last four men, a figure that reads as copied from a list, not estimated.

Anathoth and Alameth are the names of Benjamite towns, both given to the priests in 6:60, and here they are sons of Becher, the founders the towns were named after. Omri shares his name with the king who built Samaria, and Abiah with Samuel’s second son.

Becher’s clan is probably the one behind “Sheba the son of Bichri, a Benjamite”, whose revolt followed Absalom’s (2 Samuel 20:1); Bichri reads naturally as “the Becherite”. Saul’s own pedigree in 1 Samuel 9:1 includes a Bechorath. The family’s strength, twenty thousand two hundred, was not small.

One of Bilhan’s sons is named Benjamin, after the tribe itself. Ehud shares his name with the left-handed judge (Judges 3:15). Chenaanah means Canaanite, and Tharshish is spelled like the distant port and a precious stone. Ahishahar means my brother is the dawn.

“Fit to go out for war” echoes Numbers 1:3, “all that are able to go forth to war in Israel”. Adding the three clans gives 59,434 for Benjamin, against 45,600 in Numbers 26:41. The small tribe has grown in this record, whatever the source of the counts.

Shuppim and Huppim are the Shupham and Hupham of Numbers 26:39. Hushim is the only son of Dan in Genesis 46:23, and Aher means simply “another”. Many think Dan’s entry lies hidden here, the name replaced by “another”, since Dan otherwise has no genealogy in these chapters. That is a scholarly inference.

The four sons match Genesis 46:24, with Shillem spelled Shallum. Calling them “the sons of Bilhah” follows Genesis 46:25, which closes Naphtali’s and Dan’s families under the name of the maid Rachel gave Jacob. Bilhah is named here although only her grandsons are listed.

“Whom she bare” has no woman before it to refer to, so a name has fallen out. Machir, “the father of Gilead”, took Gilead by force (Numbers 32:39–40). Genesis 50:23 says Machir’s children were “brought up upon Joseph’s knees”, so Joseph lived to see them.

“The second” implies a first who is never named. Numbers 26:33 makes Zelophehad the son of Hepher, great-grandson of Machir, so he sits a generation or more too high here. Maachah is called Huppim and Shuppim’s sister, which ties Manasseh by marriage to the Benjamite families of verse 12.

Maachah names her own son, as Leah and Rachel named theirs. Verse 15 called Maachah the sister and here she is the wife, a tangle the text leaves standing. Peresh and Sheresh rhyme, a pair of brothers’ names chosen to chime.

The Hebrew of 1 Samuel 12:11 lists a deliverer called Bedan beside Jerubbaal, Jephthah and Samuel, a judge found nowhere in the Book of Judges; the Greek there reads Barak. This Bedan, a Manassite of Gilead, is the only other man with the name.

Hammoleketh means “she who reigns”, the queen, an unusual name for a woman in a tribal list. Abiezer is the clan of Gideon, whose father was Joash the Abiezrite (Judges 6:11). Mahalah is close to Mahlah, the eldest of Zelophehad’s daughters (Numbers 26:33).

Shechem is a man here, the founder of the clan that shared the city’s name, one of the Manassite families listed in Joshua 17:2. Pottery receipts found at Samaria from the eighth century BC name clans of Shemida, Abiezer and Shechem as districts sending oil and wine, the same names in the ground.

Shuthelah heads the Ephraimite families in Numbers 26:35. Tahath comes twice in five generations, a grandfather’s name given again. The line is set out in the “his son” pattern, straight down, with no brothers named.

The Hebrew can be read either way, but “they came down” fits the sons of Ephraim going down from the hills to the plain to lift the cattle of Gath. “Born in that land” marks the Gathites as natives. Since Ephraim himself mourns, Jewish tradition placed the raid in the years in Egypt.

“Mourned many days” and “his brethren came to comfort him” are almost the words of Genesis 37:34–35, where Jacob mourned Joseph “many days” and his sons “rose up to comfort him”. Joseph’s son now grieves for his own sons as Jacob once grieved for Joseph.

The name Beriah sounds like be-ra’ah, “in evil” or “in misfortune”, the explanation Ephraim gives. A son born after a loss and named for it recalls Seth, given “instead of Abel” (Genesis 4:25). Asher also has a son called Beriah in verse 30.

Beth-horon probably means house of Horon, a Canaanite god, and its two towns guarded the main pass from the coastal plain into the hills. Uzzen-sherah, “Sherah’s portion”, carries her name. The verb “built” can mean founding or fortifying, and either is credited to her.

Resheph is also the name of a Canaanite god of plague, and the Hebrew word means flame or pestilence: “burning heat” in Deuteronomy 32:24, “burning coals” in Habakkuk 3:5. On an Ephraimite it is simply a name. Tahan is one of Ephraim’s families in Numbers 26:35.

Elishama son of Ammihud was the prince of Ephraim in the wilderness (Numbers 1:10), who brought his tribe’s offering on the seventh day of the altar’s dedication (Numbers 7:48). The line passes through the man who led the tribe out of Egypt.

Non is Nun, and Jehoshua is the full form of Joshua, the name Moses gave Oshea (Numbers 13:16). Joshua stands about ten generations after Ephraim, while Moses stands four after Levi (6:1–3). This longer line suits the long stay in Egypt better than the shorter one does.

Bethel is where Jacob dreamed of the ladder, and later where Jeroboam set up one of his golden calves (1 Kings 12:29). The King James “Gaza” follows one reading; many Hebrew manuscripts have Ayyah, a place near Bethel, since the Philistine Gaza lay far outside Ephraim’s land.

Beth-shean, Taanach, Megiddo and Dor are the very towns Judges 1:27 says Manasseh could not take: “the Canaanites would dwell in that land.” Saul’s body was fastened to the wall of Beth-shean (1 Samuel 31:10). The list gives the inheritance as it was meant to be.

The names follow Genesis 46:17. Serah is one of very few granddaughters of Jacob named anywhere, and Numbers 26:46 names her again in the wilderness census. Later Jewish legend made her extraordinarily long-lived, a tradition built on her surprising reappearance, not on anything this verse says.

Heber and Malchiel, both named in Genesis 46:17, head Asher’s two main clans. Birzavith is probably a town whose founder Malchiel was, and the name may mean well of olives. Asher’s blessing in Deuteronomy 33:24 was to “dip his foot in oil”.

Joshua 16:3 names “the coast of Japhleti” on Ephraim’s southern boundary, which may carry the name of this Japhlet’s clan far from Asher. Shomer is spelled Shamer two verses on, and Hotham becomes Helem, one family under two sets of spellings.

Pasach, Bimhal and Ashvath occur nowhere else in Scripture. Japhlet is the only son of Heber whose list is closed with its own summary line, “These are the children of Japhlet”, as though it came from a separate record.

The word rendered as the name Ahi can be read achiv, “his brother”, making Shamer the brother of Japhlet and leaving three sons. Aram, one of them, bears the name of the Arameans, the people just beyond Asher’s northern border.

Helem is Hotham of verse 32. Amal is the Hebrew word for toil or trouble, the “labour and sorrow” of Psalm 90:10. Shelesh sounds like the number three. These are names that meant something ordinary in the language, not names made from God’s.

Harnepher looks Egyptian, Horus is good, an Egyptian name on a man of Asher. Shual means fox or jackal, the animal Samson caught in hundreds (Judges 15:4). The list moves down to the third generation from Heber.

With these six, Zophah has eleven sons, the largest family in Asher’s list. Ithran and Jether in the next verse come from the same root, yeter, and are probably one man. Beera means well, a name for a place of water or a child born near one.

Jephunneh is also the name of Caleb’s father (4:15), here on an Asherite. Pispah is found nowhere else. This small household is listed as carefully as the large ones, three sons and no remark.

Ulla appears with no father given, and some suspect a corruption of one of the names above. Arah here and Ara in verse 38 differ by a single letter in English. Haniel means grace of God, and Rezia is otherwise unknown.

“Choice” is berurim, sifted or purified, men picked out. Asher had 41,500 men in Numbers 1:41 and 53,400 in Numbers 26:47; twenty six thousand is less than half of that. “Chief of the princes” ranks these heads above the tribe’s ordinary nobility.