members of his family; and the conclusion would be the same, even if this Joel be another than the one mentioned in 1Ch 5:4. The singular suffix with למשׁפּחתיו is to be taken distributively or אישׁ may be supplied before it in thought; cf. Num 2:34; Num 11:10. The word ראשׁ, “head,” for the first-born, stands here before the name, as in 1Ch 12:3; 1Ch 23:8; elsewhere it stands after the name, e.g., 1Ch 5:12 and 1Ch 9:17. The dwelling-places of Bela and his family are then given in 1Ch 5:8, 1Ch 5:9. “He dwelt in Aroer,” on the banks of the brook Arnon (Jos 13:9; Jos 12:2), now the ruin Araayr on the northern bank of the Mojeb (vide on Num 32:34). “Until Nebo and Baal-meon” westward. Nebo, a village on the hill of the same name in the mountains of Abarim, opposite Jericho (cf. on Num 32:38). Baal-meon is probably identical with the ruin Myun, three-quarters of an hour south-east from Heshbon.
Verse 9
1Ch 5:9 “Eastward to the coming to the desert (i.e., till towards the desert) from the river Euphrates,” i.e., to the great Arabico-Syrian desert, which stretches from the Euphrates to the eastern frontier of Perea, or from Gilead to the Euphrates. Bela's family had spread themselves so far abroad, “for their herds were numerous in the land of Gilead,” i.e., Perea, the whole trans-Jordanic domain of the Israelites.
Verse 10
1Ch 5:10 “In the days of Saul they made war upon the Hagarites, and they fill into their hands, and they dwelt in their tents over the whole east side of Gilead.” The subject is not determined, so that the words may be referred either to the whole tribe of Reuben or to the family of Bela (1Ch 5:8). The circumstance that in 1Ch 5:8 and 1Ch 5:9 Bela is spoken of in the singular (יושׁב הוּא and ישׁב), while here the plural is used in reference to the war, is not sufficient to show that the words do not refer to Bela's family, for the narrative has already fallen into the plural in the last clause of 1Ch 5:9. We therefore think it better to refer 1Ch 5:10 to the family of Bela, seeing that the wide spread of this family, which is mentioned in 1Ch 5:9, as far as the desert to the east of the inhabited land, presupposes the driving out of the Hagarites dwelling on the eastern plain of Gilead. The notice of this war, moreover, is clearly inserted here for the purpose of explaining the wide spread of the Belaites even to the Euphrates desert, and there is nothing which can be adduced against that reference. The אחיו in 1Ch 5:7 does not, as Bertheau thinks probable, denote that Bela was a contemporary of Beerah, even if the circumstance that from Bela to Joel only three
