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1 Chronicles1:41

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1 Chronicles 1:41 — . Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.

41

The son of Anah: Dishon. The sons of Dishon: Hemdan, Eshban, Ithran, and Cheran.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

bə·nê ‘ă·nāh dī·šō·ns ū·ḇə·nê ḏî·šō·wn ḥam·rān wə·’eš·bān wə·yiṯ·rān ū·ḵə·rān

Word by word9 · parsed
בְּנֵ֥יbə·nêThe sonH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcNounmasculine plural construct
bên: a son, as builder of the family name (H1121) The Chronicler's structural word, the verb-like noun on which the whole first nine chapters are built. Its root sense, a son as one who builds up the house, makes each name load-bearing rather than decorative. Here the plural construct governs a single following name, which Ellicott explains as the idiom of a clan-head standing for his clans, “like Ammon or Israel.”
עֲנָ֖ה‘ă·nāhof AnahH6034
√ ʻĂnâh — Anah, the name of two Edomites and one EdomitessNounpropermasculine singular
ʻĂnâh: Anah, the name of two Edomites and one Edomitess (H6034) Strong's own gloss concedes the confusion: the name covers more than one person in Genesis 36, and Anah is both son of Seir and son of Zibeon there. K&D reads the whole Seirite section as the record of aborigines absorbed by Esau's house, and the doubled Anah is one seam of that fusion. Ellicott notes the Chronicler omits Genesis 36:25's “and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah,” dropping the one woman in the sub-list.
דִּישׁ֑וֹןסdī·šō·nsDishonH1787
√ Dîyshôwn — Dishon, the name of two EdomitesNounpropermasculine singular
Dîyshôwn: Dishon, the name of two Edomites (H1787) The lexicon again records a doubled name: Dishon is both a son of Seir (v. 38) and here a son of Anah, and the Verifier finds the same lexeme again in the very next verse, 1 Chronicles 1:42. This is why the singular “son” is not an error but a compression: the name functions as a clan label that can attach at more than one node in the tree.
וּבְנֵ֣יū·ḇə·nêThe sonsH1121
√ bên — a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etcConjunctive wawNounmasculine plural construct
Conjunctive waw plus the same construct plural as index 0; the formula simply resets for the next tier of the list.
דִישׁ֔וֹןḏî·šō·wnof DishonH1787
√ Dîyshôwn — Dishon, the name of two EdomitesNounpropermd
Dîyshôwn: Dishon, the name of two Edomites (H1787) The same name repeats inside one verse, first as the son received and then as the father of four, and that hinge is the entire structure of the line. Note also that the morphological source parses this occurrence “Noun - proper - md” while index 2, the identical name, is tagged masculine singular; we report the discrepancy rather than build anything on it.
חַמְרָ֥ןḥam·rānHemdanH2566
√ Chamrân — Chamran, an IdumaeanNounpropermasculine singular
Chamrân: Chamran, an Idumaean (H2566) Strong's transliterates the Hebrew as Chamran, not Hemdan, confirming that the printed English name is a harmonization toward Genesis 36:26. Barnes traces the swap to a single-letter difference of the same kind he had already noted at 1 Chronicles 1:30. The honest position is that the Chronicler's Vorlage and Genesis differ here, and no one gains by hiding it.
וְאֶשְׁבָּ֖ןwə·’eš·bānEshbanH790
√ ʼEshbân — Eshban, an IdumaeanConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
ʼEshbân: Eshban, an Idumaean (H790) A genuinely rare lexeme: the Verifier finds it in only two verses in the whole canon, this one and Genesis 36:26. A name that occurs twice and nowhere else is a fingerprint, and it is the strongest single evidence that these two lists descend from one written source.
וְיִתְרָ֥ןwə·yiṯ·rānIthranH3506
√ Yithrân — Jithran, the name of an Edomite and of an IsraeliteConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Yithrân: Jithran, the name of an Edomite and of an Israelite (H3506) Strong's gloss itself records the crossing: the same name sits in Edom here and in Asher at 1 Chronicles 7:37. Three verses in all. The Chronicler, who is building toward Israel, keeps a name Israel also carries, and makes no comment on it.
וּכְרָֽן׃סū·ḵə·rānand CheranH3763
√ Kᵉrân — Keran, an aboriginal IdumaeanConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Kᵉrân: Keran, an aboriginal Idumaean (H3763) Rarer still: two verses in the canon, here and Genesis 36:26, and Strong's calls him an aboriginal Idumaean, that is, a Horite of the land before Esau came. The list ends on a man whose only surviving trace in Scripture is that he was written down twice.

The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.

⚙

Grand Commentary — the unit, read whole

synthesis · verify

AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.

i. One son, plural: the grammar of a clan — 1 Chronicles 1:41a

The verse opens with בְּנֵ֥י (bə·nê, H1121), a plural construct, and then names exactly one son. BSB writes “The son of Anah,” which is good English and a small loss. Ellicott declines the repair and offers a reason instead: Dishon, he says, is a collective name “like Ammon or Israel,” a clan-label rather than a single man, so the plural is not a slip. ✦ Ellicott also observes what the Chronicler leaves out, that Genesis 36:25 adds “and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah,” a woman dropped from this telling. ⚙ Put those two together and the Chronicler's method shows: he is copying a tribal register, and a register counts houses, not heads. K&D, working the same section, says the Seirites became “fused with them into one people” under Esau's descendants, which is precisely the condition in which a personal name hardens into a clan name.

ii. Hamran, Hemdan, Amram: one letter of honest wobble — 1 Chronicles 1:41b

The fifth word is חַמְרָ֥ן, Hamran (H2566, which Strong's itself glosses “Chamran, an Idumaean”). BSB prints “Hemdan,” following Genesis 36:26; the King James in front of Barnes printed “Amram.” ✦ Barnes puts the whole matter in one sentence: the forms “differ in the original by the same letter only which marks the difference in 1 Chronicles 1:30.” ⚙ That is a textual critic's remark, not a devotional one, and it is the most valuable thing said about this verse. Two nearly identical strokes, ר and ד, have produced three English names for one Edomite. The Chronicler did not correct his source; the Masoretes did not correct the Chronicler; and the difference stands in the received text to this day. ✦ Gill, whose note runs from v. 38 through v. 42, says the same thing without the mechanics: this account “is the same with Genesis 36:20, with some little variation of names.” A book that wanted to look seamless would have removed the variation. This one kept it.

iii. The aborigines written down — 1 Chronicles 1:41

Eshban and Cheran occur in two verses each in the whole Bible, this one and Genesis 36:26; Strong's calls Cheran “an aboriginal Idumaean.” ✦ K&D explains why they are here at all: “When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land,” and so Genesis 36 and this chapter both list the Seirite phylarchs alongside the Edomite ones, seven and thirteen. ✦ K&D then spends most of his entry refusing Bertheau's tidy arithmetic of seventy tribes, showing by count that the text yields sixty-nine, and objecting to “the arbitrary change of Timna into a grandchild of Esau.” ⚙ The refusal is instructive: the commentator most able to make the numbers preach is the one who will not round them. ✦ JFB pulls the other way, identifying these names with living Arab tribes, Reuel with “the Rowalla Arabs,” Shammah with “the great tribe Beni Shammar,” and Jobab with Job himself, on Forster's authority. ⚙ Those identifications are attractive and thinly evidenced, and we have flagged the thread accordingly.

iv. What a list is for — 1 Chronicles 1:41

✦ Matthew Henry, reading the whole block, will not let the reader skim: “Let us take occasion from reading these lists of names, to think of the multitudes that have gone through this world, have done their parts in it, and then quitted it,” and he ends, “Short is our passage through time into eternity.” ⚙ Henry is not exegeting Cheran; he is answering the question the verse actually raises in a modern reader, which is why any of this is in Scripture. The answer this verse gives is narrow and sufficient: these men existed, they were not Israel, and God's book records their names with the same care it gives to Judah's. ⚙ The Chronicler is writing for a returned exile community that has to prove its own descent from a register, and he begins by showing that registers are how God has always kept the human family, including the branches he did not choose.

Read under Sola Scriptura — this tool’s own fallible reading (⚙)

⚙ This is our own fallible reading, offered to be tested. A genealogy is the least defended kind of writing there is: it makes no argument, so it cannot flatter, and it cannot be paraphrased into meaning something else. Which is why the wobble at the fifth word matters more than a smooth text would. Hamran or Hemdan, the Chronicler copied what was handed to him and let the seam show, and the Masoretes preserved the seam rather than shave it. That is the behaviour of men who believed they were custodians of a text and not its authors. ⚙ And the names themselves are the point of the chapter: Eshban and Cheran are outside the covenant, aboriginal to a land Esau took, remembered nowhere else in Scripture except in one other list. They contribute nothing to redemptive history; they are simply written down. The same God who will narrow this book to one tribe, one house, one son, first takes the trouble to record the sons of a Horite chief whose descendants no one would ever trace. ⚙ We do not think that is sentimentality. It is the claim that being unchosen is not the same as being unknown, and it is the necessary backdrop to Romans 9, where Paul argues election from Jacob and Esau precisely because both were named and neither was forgotten.

Not a verse, our own line: God wrote down Cheran, who built nothing and went nowhere, and the book that narrows to one Son would not begin by forgetting him.

⚙

Canonical Threads — out to the whole of Scripture

cross-refs · verify

AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.

One source behind two books: Eshban and Cheran occur nowhere else verbal / quotation: confirmed

This verse and Genesis 36:26 share three proper-name lexemes, and two of them are effectively unique to the pair. ⚙ A lexeme found in two verses in the entire canon is not a coincidence of vocabulary; it is a copying relationship. ✦ Gill states the relation plainly for the whole block: the account here “is the same with Genesis 36:20, with some little variation of names.” ✦ Barnes locates one of those variations exactly, in the single letter separating Hamran from Hemdan. ⚙ We therefore tier this as a verbal link in the strict sense, a shared written text, while noting that it is a register copied rather than a passage quoted.

Genesis 36:26

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3506 Yithrân (in 3 vv), H3763 Kᵉrân (in 2 vv), H790 ʼEshbân (in 2 vv). Two of the three occur in only these two verses in the canon, and all three converge on this single pair of verses, which points to documentary dependence rather than shared motif. Order of the names in Genesis 36:26 is not supplied by the brief and is not claimed here.

The Seirite register: Anah and Dishon across Genesis 36 and 1 Chronicles 1 structural / thematic: confirmed

Anah and Dishon recur through the Horite lists at 1 Chronicles 1:38, Genesis 36:20-21, 25 and 30. ✦ K&D sets out the frame: the seven Seirite phylarchs are noticed “in Genesis 36:20-30” and again “in our chapter also, 1 Chronicles 1:38,” with their sons in vv. 39-42, “where only Aholibamah the daughter of Anah, also mentioned in Genesis 36:25, is omitted.” ✦ Ellicott notes the same omission from the other end. ⚙ The link is real and repeated, but the shared lexemes here are common within the Edomite material rather than rare, so we claim structure and not quotation.

Genesis 36:20 · Genesis 36:21 · Genesis 36:25 · Genesis 36:30 · 1 Chronicles 1:38 · 1 Chronicles 1:42

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6034 ʻĂnâh (in 10 vv) and H1787 Dîyshôwn (in 6 vv) across 1 Chronicles 1:38, 1:42 and Genesis 36:20, 21, 25, 30. Real verbal contact, but both lexemes are frequent within this one block of Edomite material, so the shared pattern is a register, not a citation.

Ithran in Edom and Ithran in Asher structural / thematic: confirmed

H3506 Yithrân occurs in three verses: here, Genesis 36:26, and 1 Chronicles 7:37, where an Ithran stands in the genealogy of Asher. ⚙ Strong's own gloss records the crossing, “Jithran, the name of an Edomite and of an Israelite.” ⚙ We resist making this mean anything. Shared personal names across peoples are ordinary in Semitic onomastics, and the Chronicler draws no connection. What it does show is that the Chronicler's own book carries the name on both sides of the covenant line without embarrassment, which is worth noticing in a work often accused of tidying Israel's record.

1 Chronicles 7:37 · Genesis 36:26

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H3506 Yithrân (in 3 vv). The lexeme is rare, but it is a personal name borne by two unrelated men, so no quotation or allusion is claimed; the link is onomastic and structural only.

JFB on Edomite names surviving in modern Arab tribes flagged: verify source

✦ JFB, commenting across this section, identifies the Edomite names with tribes of his own day: Reuel is “a powerful branch of the great Aeneze tribe, the Rowalla Arabs,” Shammah “the great tribe Beni Shammar,” and Jobab of 1 Chronicles 1:44 “is considered to be Job,” his seat at Dinahab being “identified with O'Daeb, a well-known town in the center of Al Dahna,” on the authority of Forster. ⚙ We record the claim and flag it. The Jobab-Job identification is ancient and popular but rests on the Septuagint appendix to Job rather than on the Hebrew text; Forster's nineteenth-century tribal equations are geographically suggestive and philologically unproven. No Verifier lexeme link supports any of it. The reader should know this is a commentator's hypothesis, not a finding of the text.

Genesis 36:32 · 1 Chronicles 1:43 · 1 Chronicles 1:44

basis: Provenance contested. JFB's identifications are credited in his own text to Forster, and the Jobab equals Job equation depends on the Greek appendix to Job, not the Hebrew. No shared Strong's lexeme connects 1 Chronicles 1:41 to these verses; the link is a commentator's conjecture reported verbatim, not a textual basis.

The line God passed over, kept in the record structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ Paul's argument for election in Romans 9:10-13 depends on Esau and Jacob both being named men with named descendants, and he anchors it in Malachi 1:2-3, which pronounces on Esau by pointing at Edom's ruined heritage. This verse is a fragment of exactly the record Paul and Malachi presuppose. ✦ Henry, reading these lists, draws the same line pastorally: generations pass, “and will do so while the earth remains.” ⚙ This is a cross-Testament link, so no shared Strong's number is possible between the Hebrew register and the Greek epistle; we claim only that Romans 9 argues from the existence and integrity of genealogies like this one. Malachi 1:3 does name Edom in Hebrew, but the Verifier returned no shared lexeme with this verse, and we will not manufacture one.

Romans 9:10-13 · Malachi 1:2-3 · Genesis 36:1

basis: No Verifier lexeme basis, and none is possible for the Hebrew-to-Greek half of the link. Shared subject matter only: the Edomite descent recorded here is the material Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:10-13 reason from. Tiered structural and never verbal for that reason.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

Named and not chosen: the backdrop Paul needs ancient/widely-held

⚙ The gospel's doctrine of election is unintelligible without lists like this one. Paul does not argue from an abstraction; he argues from two brothers, one womb, one father, and two lines of descendants written down side by side (Romans 9:10-13). Hebrews 12:16-17 makes Esau a warning with a history attached. ✦ K&D's survey of the whole posterity of Abraham in 1 Chronicles 1:28-42 sets out the shape: Ishmael's twelve, Keturah's thirteen, Esau's thirteen phylarchs, Seir's seven, and then, only then, Israel. ⚙ Every branch is counted before the chosen branch is followed, and the counting is not grudging. This is the apostolic reading of the Genesis and Chronicles genealogies, held from Paul forward, that the record of the passed-over is preserved by the same God who chose, and that his freedom is displayed against names he did not forget.

Romans 9:10-13 · Hebrews 12:16-17 · Genesis 25:23

One who comes from Edom ancient/widely-held

⚙ Edom is where this chapter's Seirite names live, and Edom is where Isaiah 63:1-6 places the figure who comes from Bozrah in stained garments, treading a winepress alone. Revelation 19:13 sets its rider in a bloodied robe and names him the Word of God. Both are described here rather than quoted, since neither text is supplied in this unit's brief and we will not reproduce Scripture from memory. ⚙ The Christian tradition has read Isaiah 63 of Christ from the Fathers onward, and it is honest to say that many modern exegetes read the figure as YHWH the divine warrior rather than as the incarnate Son, a reading the New Testament does not directly settle. ⚙ What this verse contributes is only the ground: the Horite names here are the earliest layer of the land that will later be named in that oracle. The list is not a prophecy. It is the map the prophecy will use.

Isaiah 63:1-6 · Revelation 19:13 · Obadiah 1:8-10

A genealogy is the form the incarnation takes novel

⚙ The Chronicler begins with Adam and narrows, through Abraham, past Ishmael, past Keturah's sons, past Esau and past these Horites, toward David. Matthew 1:1-17 and Luke 3:23-38 resume the same method and end it in a person. ✦ Gill notes that Seir's family is included here only “because they were a family into which Esau, and a son of his, married, and whose possessions he and his obtained,” that is, they enter the record by marriage and by land. ⚙ We offer as our own reading, and mark it as ours, that this is the logic the incarnation will eventually satisfy in full: God binds himself to the world by descent, by marriage, and by inheritance, and a book that tracks those three things through Cheran and Eshban is already working in the grammar the Word made flesh will speak.

Matthew 1:1-17 · Luke 3:23-38 · Galatians 4:4

Apparatus & Provenance

The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.

Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)

Text. BSB prints “Hemdan” for the fifth name; the Hebrew surface in the Berean interlinear is חַמְרָ֥ן (ḥam·rān), and Strong's H2566 glosses it “Chamran.” The King James in front of Barnes read “Amram.” We have followed the Hebrew in the literal rendering and named the divergence rather than choosing a winner. ✦ Barnes is the only voice in this brief who addresses it directly.

Scribal marks. The surfaces at indices 2 and 8 carry a trailing samekh (דִּישׁ֑וֹןס, וּכְרָֽן׃ס), the Masoretic setumah section marker. It is not part of either name. We have flagged it as a divergence because no English version can represent it.

Parse oddity. The source parse for index 4 (דִישׁ֔וֹן) reads “Noun - proper - md,” an abbreviated tag we cannot expand with confidence; index 2, the same name, is tagged “masculine singular.” We have not built any claim on the difference and report it as an artifact of the morphological source.

Sources. Poole has no note on this verse. Geneva's entry is a bare restatement of the King James text followed by a section heading, so it carried nothing quotable and was not used. Gill's note is attached at v. 38 and explicitly covers “from hence, to the end of 1 Chronicles 1:42,” so his words are cited as covering this verse rather than as commenting on it alone; the same is true of Henry, whose comment is written over 1 Chronicles 1:28-54, and of JFB, whose note is keyed to v. 37. The K&D entry in this brief is capped near the end of its Bertheau footnote; nothing quoted here falls in the capped remainder.

What is uncertain. Whether Anah here is the son of Seir or the son of Zibeon (Genesis 36:24 names an Anah who found the hot springs) is not settled by this verse, and Strong's records two Edomite men and one woman of that name. Whether the Chronicler's differences from Genesis 36 are scribal or reflect a different register we do not know; Gill calls them “some little variation of names” and leaves it there, which is as far as the evidence goes.

✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)