Joel; cf. 1Ch 6:33 with 1Sa 8:2. Now, although the two last-mentioned omissions can be supplied, they yet show that the enumeration in 1Ch 6:22 is not a continuous list of one Kohathite family, but contains only fragments of several Kohathite genealogies. - In 1Ch 6:29 and 1Ch 6:30, descendants of Merari follow; sons of Mahli in six generations, who are not mentioned elsewhere. Bertheau compares this list of names, Mahli, Libni, Shimei, Uzza, Shimea, Haggiah, and Asaiah, with the list contained in 1Ch 6:44, Mushi, Mahli, Shamer, Bani, Amzi, Hilkiah, and Amaziah, and attempts to maintain, notwithstanding the great difference in the names, that the two lists were originally identical, in order to find support for the hypothesis “that the three lists in 1Ch 6:20 have not found a place in the Chronicle from their own intrinsic value, or, in other words, have not been introduced there in order to give a register of the ancestors of Jeaterai, the sons of Samuel and Asaiah, but have been received only because they bring us to Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, 1Ch 6:34, 1Ch 6:39, 1Ch 6:44, in another fashion than the lists of names in 1Ch 6:33.” But this hypothesis is shown to be false, apart altogether from the other objections which might be raised against it, by the single fact of the total discrepancy between the names of the Merarites in 1Ch 6:29 and 1Ch 6:30 and those found in 1Ch 6:44-47. Of all the six names only Mahli is found in both cases, and he is carefully distinguished in both - in the genealogy of Ethan as the son of Mushi and grandson of Merari; in our list as the son of Merari. When we remember that Merari had two sons, Mahli and Mushi, after whom the father's-houses into which his descendants divided themselves were named (Num 3:20; Num 26:58), and that the same names very frequently occur in different families, it would never suggest itself to any reader of our register to identify the line of Mushi with the line of Mahli, seeing that, except the name of Mahli the son of Mushi, which is the same as that of his uncle, all the other names are different. 1Ch 6:29 and 1Ch 6:30 contain a register of the family of Mahli, while the ancestors of Ethan, 1Ch 6:44-47, belonged to the family of Mushi. Our list then absolutely cannot be intended to form a transition to Ethan or Ethan's ancestors. The same may be said of the two other lists 1Ch 6:20-22 and 1Ch 6:23-28, and this transition hypothesis is consequently a mere airspun fancy. The three lists are certainly not embodied in the Chronicle on account of the persons with whose
