slightest degree probable, when we consider the accuracy of this register in other respects. The only remaining explanation therefore is, that the descendants of Becher were in reality not numerous enough to form a משׁפּחה by themselves, but had afterwards so increased that they numbered nine fathers'-houses, with a total of 20,200 valiant warriors. The numbers in our register point unquestionably to post-Mosaic times; for at the second numbering by Moses, all the families of Benjamin together numbered only 45,600 men (Num 26:41), while the three families mentioned in our verses number together 59,434 (22,034 + 20,200 + 17,200). The tribe of Benjamin, which moreover was entirely destroyed, with the exception of 600 men, in the war which it waged against the other tribes in the earlier part of the period of the judges (Jdg 20:47), could not have increased to such an extent before the times of David and Solomon. The name of the third son of Benjamin, Jediael, occurs only here, and is considered by the older commentators to be another name of Ashbel (Gen 46:21 and Num 26:38), which cannot indeed be accepted as a certainty, but is very probable.
Verse 7
The five heads of fathers'-houses called sons of Bela are not sons in the proper sense of the word, but more distant descendants, who, at the time when this register was made up, were heads of the five groups of related households of the race of Bela. חילים גּבּורי is synonymous with חיל גּבּורי, 1Ch 7:9, and is a plural, formed as if from a nomen compositum, which arose after the frequent use of the words as they are bound together in the status constructus had obscured the consciousness of the relation between them.
Verses 8-9
Becher's descendants. Of these nine names there are two, ענתות and עלמת, which occur elsewhere as names of cities (cf. for עלמת in the form עלּמת, 1Ch 6:45; and for ענתות, Jos 21:18; Isa 10:30; Jer 1:1). We may, without doubt, accept the supposition that in these cases the cities received their names from the heads of the families which inhabited them. In 1Ch 7:9, אבותם בּית ראשׁי stands in apposition to, and is explanatory of, לתולדותם: “And their register, according to their generations,” viz., according to the generations, that is, the birth-lists, “of the heads of their fathers'-houses, is (amounts to) in valiant heroes 20,200 men.”
Verses 10-11
Among the descendants of Jediael we find Benjamin and Ehud, the first of whom is named after the patriarch; but the second is not the judge Ehud (Jdg 3:15), who was indeed a Benjamite,
