Ephraimite city Shiloh can either be proved or is at all likely. The older commentators, therefore, have suggested the reading השּׁלני, as in Num 26:20, where the family of Shelah, the third sons of Judah, is so called. This suggestion is doubtless correct, and the erroneous punctuation השּׁילני has probably arisen only from the scriptio plena of the word שׁילה instead of שׁלה. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that the form השּׁלני is found in Neh 11:5, although it also is pointed השּׁלני. In Neh. loc. cit., instead of Asaiah, Maaseiah is introduced as בּן־השּׁלני in the seventh generation, while no ancestors whatever of our Asaiah are mentioned. The name עשׂיה, moreover, is not unfrequent, and occurs in 1Ch 4:36 among the Simeonites; in 1Ch 6:15; 1Ch 15:6, 1Ch 15:11, among the Levites; in 2Ki 22:12, 2Ki 22:14 and 2Ch 34:20, as עבד of the King Josiah. מעשׁיה is the name of many persons, e.g., in 1Ch 15:18, 1Ch 15:20, and likewise in 2Ch 23:1; Jer 21:1; Jer 29:21; Jer 35:4; and elsewhere it is used of men of other tribes: so that even should Maaseiah have been written instead of Asaiah merely by an error of transcription, we are not warranted in identifying our Asaiah with the Maaseiah of Nehemiah.
Verse 6
1Ch 9:6 “Of the sons of Zerah, Jeuel;” also the name of various persons; cf. 1Ch 5:7; 2Ch 26:11 : the register in Neh 11 notices no descendants of Zerah. “And their brethren, 690 (men).” The plural suffix in אחיהם cannot be referred, as Bertheau thinks, to Jeuel, for that name, as being that of the head of a father's-house, cannot be a collective. The suffix most consequently refer to the three heads mentioned in 1Ch 9:4-6, Uthai, Asaiah, and Jeuel, whose brethren are the other heads of fathers'-houses of the three families descended from Judah; cf. 1Ch 9:9, where the number of the אחים mentioned refers to all the heads who had formerly been spoken of.
Verses 7-9
Of the sons of Benjamin, i.e., of the Benjamites, four heads are named, Sallu, Ibneiah, Elah, and Meshullam; and of the first and fourth of these, three generations of ancestors are mentioned, of the second only the father, of the third the father and grandfather. “And their brethren according to their generations, 956;” cf. on 1Ch 9:6. “All these men” are not the brethren whose number is given, but the heads who have been mentioned by name. Now, if we compare this with Neh 11, we meet in 1Ch 9:7-9 with only one of the four heads of Benjamin, Sallu, and that too, as in the Chronicle, as a son of Meshullam, while the ancestors of both are different. Instead of the three others in 1Ch 9:8, we have סלּי גּבּי, 928; and in 1Ch 9:9,
