dwelling-place: as, for instance, the genealogies of Simeon, 1 Chron 4:24-43; of Reuben, Gad, half Manasseh, 1 Chron 5:1-24; and Ephraim, 1Ch 7:28-29. Others give only the number of men capable of bearing arms belonging to the individual fathers'-houses, as those of Issachar, Benjamin, and Asher, 1Ch 7:2-5, 1Ch 7:7-11, 1Ch 7:40; and finally, of the longer genealogical lists of Judah and Benjamin, those in 1 Chron 4:1-20 and in 1 Chron 8 consist only of fragments, loosely ranged one after the other, giving us the names of a few of the posterity of individual men, whose genealogical connection with the larger divisions of these tribes is not stated.
By all this, it is satisfactorily proved that all these registers and lists have not been derived from one larger genealogical historical work, but have been drawn together from various old genealogical lists which single races and families had saved and carried with them into exile, and preserved until their return into the land of their fathers; and that the author of the Chronicle has received into his work all of these that he could obtain, whether complete or imperfect, just as he found them. Nowhere is any trace of artificial arrangement or an amalgamation of the various lists to be found.
Now, when we recollect that the Chronicle was composed in the time of Ezra, and that up to that time, of the whole people, for the most part only households and families of the tribes of Judah, Levi, and Benjamin had returned to Canaan, we will not find it wonderful that the Chronicle contains somewhat more copious registers of these three tribes, and gives us only fragments bearing on the circumstances of prae-exilic times in the case of the remaining tribes.
Chap. 1
Verses 1-4
1Ch 1:1-4The patriarchs from Adam to Noah and his sons. - The names of the ten patriarchs of the primeval world, from the Creation to the Flood, and the three sons of Noah, are given according to Gen 5, and grouped together without any link of connection whatever: it is assumed as known from Genesis, that the first ten names denote generations succeeding one another, and that the last three, on the contrary, are the names of brethren.
==Verses
