mighty men of valour, famous men, heads of their fathers' houses.
25And they trespassed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God destroyed before them. 26And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river of Gozan, unto this day.
25, 26. The Captivity of the Trans-Jordanic Tribes.
25. they trespassed] The Hebrew verb has a special reference to unlawful or idolatrous worship and also to the violation of a consecrated thing; cp. Josh. xxii. 16, 20, 31.
26. stirred up the spirit] Cp. 2 Chr. xxi. 16, where see note; xxxvi. 22.
Pul . . . and . . . Tilgath-pilneser] Both here and in 2 Kin. xv. 19, 29 (Pul . . . Tiglath-pileser) the two names are used as though two different persons were meant, but there is no doubt that Pul is the earlier and Tiglath-pileser the royal name of the same king; cp. ver. 6.
unto Halah, etc.] In 2 Kin. xv. 29 it is said only, to Assyria; in 2 Kin. xvii. 6 it is said that the Western tribes ("Samaria") were carried away and placed in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.
Halah] probably a district of Mesopotamia, but it has not yet been convincingly identified.
Habor] a river flowing into the Euphrates from the E., known to the Greeks as Χαβώρας or Ἀβόρρας.
and Hara] No place of this name is known and the word is omitted in LXX. The reading may be corrupt for and in the cities of the Medes (2 Kin. xvii. 6, cp. LXX.; xviii. 11).
the river of Gozan] Gozan was a district of Mesopotamia.
Ch. VI. 1—81 (= v. 27—vi. 66 according to the Heb. division).
Genealogies and Settlements of Levi.
1—15. The Sons of Levi, and the High-Priests
to the Captivity.
The identity of interests and standpoint between the Chronicler and the Levitical order has been noted in the Introd. § 6 ad fin. It follows that the contents of the present chapter were to him of primary importance, and doubtless these lists represent not his own view only but the developed and accepted opinion of the Levitical and priestly classes
