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1 Chronicles1:42

✦ Public-domain source — quoted & attributed⚙ AI synthesis — generated, verify

1 Chronicles 1:42 — . 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.

42

The sons of Ezer: Bilhan, Zaavan, and Akan. The sons of Dishan: Uz and Aran.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

bə·nê- ’ê·ṣer bil·hān wə·za·‘ă·wān ya·‘ă·qān bə·nê ḏî·šō·wn ‘ūṣ wa·’ă·rān

Word by word9 · parsed
בְּֽנֵי־bə·nê-The 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, etcNounmasculine plural construct
bên: a son, builder of the family name The construct plural that governs the whole verse. bên is the most load-bearing common noun in Hebrew genealogy precisely because it is elastic: literal son, grandson, clan, nation, or even a quality ("son of valor," "son of death"). In a Horite tribal register like this one it functions as a lineage marker, not a birth certificate, which is why K&D can read the whole Seir section as a list of phylarchs, tribal heads, rather than a household roll.
אֵ֔צֶר’ê·ṣerof EzerH687
√ ʼEtser — Etser, an IdumaeanNounpropermasculine singular
ʼEtser: Ezer, an Idumaean One of the seven Horite chiefs of Seir named at 1 Chronicles 1:38 and Genesis 36:21. The lexeme is scarce (5 verses in all), and the Verifier's candidate list shows every one of its occurrences clustered in this single genealogical tradition. Ezer is not a figure with a story; he is a named joint where two nations were fused, and K&D says exactly how that happened: Esau's descendants "subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people."
בִּלְהָ֥ןbil·hānBilhanH1092
√ Bilhân — Bilhan, the name of an Edomite and of an IsraeliteNounpropermd
Bilhân: Bilhan, an Edomite and an Israelite A rare name, occurring in only 3 verses. Strong's glosses it for two distinct men, and the other is a Benjaminite at 1 Chronicles 7:10, inside the Chronicler's own book. The shared lexeme is real and the Verifier records it; the identification of the two men is not made by the text and should not be made by us.
וְזַעֲוָ֖ןwə·za·‘ă·wānZaavanH2190
√ Zaʻăvân — Zaavan, an IdumaeanConjunctive wawNounpropermd
Zaʻăvân: Zaavan, an Idumaean The rarest word in the verse: H2190 stands in only 2 verses in the whole canon, here and at Genesis 36:27. That scarcity is what turns this verse's relation to Genesis 36 from a resemblance into a demonstrable textual dependence, and it is the single strongest piece of evidence for the verbal tier on that thread below.
יַעֲקָ֑ןya·‘ă·qānand AkanH3292
√ Yaʻăqân — Jaakan, an IdumaeanNounpropermd
Yaʻăqân: Jaakan, an Idumaean Written here with the initial yod that Genesis 36:27 lacks, and joined to the preceding name without a waw, so that the BSB's "and Akan" differs from the Hebrew at two points in a single word. Strong's knows this bearer only as an Idumaean; all that can be said with the sources in hand is that the Chronicler's spelling differs from his Genesis source, one of the "little variation of names" Gill flags.
בְּנֵ֥יbə·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, etcNounmasculine plural construct
bên: sons of (construct) The construct repeats, hinging the verse into its second half: one formula, two fathers, no verb anywhere in the line.
דִישׁ֖וֹןḏî·šō·wnof DishanH1787
√ Dîyshôwn — Dishon, the name of two EdomitesNounpropermasculine singular
Dîyshôwn: Dishon, the name of two Edomites The lexeme appears in 6 verses, three of them inside this chapter's own orbit (1 Chronicles 1:38, 1:41, and here) and three in Genesis 36. Strong's admits two bearers, and the Chronicler's list runs Dishon among Seir's sons at v. 38 and again as a father here, which is why English versions split the spelling into Dishon and Dishan to keep them apart. The Hebrew does not.
ע֥וּץ‘ūṣUzH5780
√ ʻÛwts — Uts, a son of Aram, also a Seirite, and the regions settled by themNounpropermasculine singular
ʻÛwts: Uz, a son of Aram, also a Seirite, and the regions settled by them The widest-reaching word in the verse (8 verses), and the one place where this obscure roster touches the rest of Scripture. Strong's own gloss collapses at least three referents into one entry: the Aramean Uz of Genesis 10:23, a Seirite Uz (this man), and the territory named from them, which is where Job is placed at Job 1:1 and where Lamentations 4:21 locates the daughter of Edom. The lexicon is honest that it is combining; we should be equally honest that the verse itself asserts only the third name in a Horite list.
וַאֲרָֽן׃פwa·’ă·rānand AranH765
√ ʼĂrân — Aran, an EdomiteConjunctive wawNounpropermd
ʼĂrân: Aran, an Edomite Like Zaavan, a two-verse word, paired with its Genesis 36:28 twin. The verse ends with him and with the scribal pe, and the Horites are never heard from again as a people; JFB, working the neighboring verses, remarks that it is "unnecessary to mention any more of these obscure nomads."

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. The last line of a borrowed list — 1 Chronicles 1:42

⚙ Nine words, no verb, five proper names. Gill states the documentary fact plainly: "The account from hence, to the end of 1 Chronicles 1:42 is the same with Genesis 36:20 , with some little variation of names." The Verifier bears him out at the level of the lexicon rather than the impression: זַעֲוָן (H2190) stands in exactly 2 verses of Scripture, this one and Genesis 36:27; אֲרָן (H765) in exactly 2, this one and Genesis 36:28. Words that rare, arriving in the same order with the same neighbors, are not coincidence. The Chronicler is copying, and the "little variation" Gill mentions is visible in the very words the English hides: יַעֲקָן carries a yod that Genesis does not, and its "and" in the BSB is supplied, since the parse for that word records no conjunctive waw.

ii. Why Israel's book keeps Edom's names — 1 Chronicles 1:42

K&D supplies the history the list presupposes: "When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people." On that reading these are not Israelite names at all. They are the aboriginal Horite chiefs, preserved inside the genealogy of a people whose book this is, because the post-exilic community counting itself back to Adam refuses to begin in the middle. Gill, noting the same section, explains why Seir's family is admitted: "This man and his posterity were not of the race of Esau, but are mentioned because they were a family into which Esau, and a son of his, married." The Chronicler narrows toward David by first recording everyone the line is not.

iii. The commentators on a list that resists commentary — 1 Chronicles 1:42

⚙ It is worth recording how the sourced voices behave when the text gives them nothing to expound. Poole writes nothing at all on this verse. Geneva prints the verse and a header and stops. Barnes is occupied with a spelling difference elsewhere in the chapter, and JFB, commenting from v. 37, calls the whole roster "obscure nomads." Only two take the genre itself seriously. Pulpit refuses to write the list off: "Some further point of practical use than has been yet ascertained may lie in the preservation of these snatches of Edom's history." Henry turns it toward the reader: "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." The honest report is that the tradition itself finds this verse hard, and says so.

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

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. A verse like this one is where a doctrine of Scripture gets weighed, because there is nothing here to enjoy. Five Horite names, two of which occur nowhere else but Genesis 36, and one closing scribal mark. If inspiration extends to this, then it extends to the parts of the record that carry no lesson on their surface, and the reason is structural rather than devotional: the Chronicler is establishing that the line he is about to trace to David is a line in real history, with real neighbors, in a land with prior inhabitants who had names. Genealogy is the form a promise takes when it has to survive centuries. The Horites are in the book because Esau married into them and because Israel's God is not the local deity of one clan but the one before whom Uz and Aran also lived and died. Henry's application is sound but incomplete: the verse teaches not only that generations pass, but that God keeps the minutes. What this reading cannot claim, and does not, is that the Chronicler had any redemptive point in view when he wrote these particular nine words. That is inference, and it is offered as inference.

Genealogy is the form a promise takes when it has to survive centuries. (This is the tool's own line, not Scripture.)

⚙

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.

The two-verse words: this line and Genesis 36:27 verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier scores Genesis 36:27 as the closest relation to this verse in the canon, and the basis is not a motif but vocabulary. זַעֲוָן (Zaʻăvân, H2190) occurs in only 2 verses in all of Scripture: this one and Genesis 36:27. בִּלְהָן (H1092) occurs in 3, and אֵצֶר (H687) in 5. Three shared lexemes, one of them effectively unique to the pair, arranged in the same sequence, is textual dependence rather than resemblance. Gill states the same conclusion from the other direction: the section "is the same with Genesis 36:20 , with some little variation of names."

Genesis 36:27

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H2190 Zaʻăvân (in 2 vv, effectively unique to this pair), H1092 Bilhân (in 3 vv), H687 ʼEtser (in 5 vv), in identical sequence; rare-lexeme concurrence plus Gill's statement of literary dependence on Genesis 36:20 and following

Uz and Aran: the second half copied from Genesis 36:28 verbal / quotation: confirmed

The verse's closing pair repeats the pattern. אֲרָן (ʼĂrân, H765) stands in only 2 verses of Scripture, here and Genesis 36:28, and it arrives in both places directly after עוּץ (H5780). The Chronicler's copy differs from his source elsewhere in spelling, but here the pair is carried over intact, which is why the Verifier ranks this second only to Genesis 36:27.

Genesis 36:28

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H765 ʼĂrân (in 2 vv, occurring nowhere else) and H5780 ʻÛwts (in 8 vv), in the same adjacent order in both verses

The frame of the Horite roster: 1 Chronicles 1:38 structural / thematic: confirmed

Four verses earlier the Chronicler names the sons of Seir, and אֵצֶר (H687) and דִישׁוֹן (H1787) stand there together as they stand here. The relation is not quotation but bracket: v. 38 opens the list of Seirite chiefs and v. 42 closes it, with the same two lexemes at both ends. Genesis 36:21 and 36:30 show the identical pairing, which is why K&D can count "seven Seirite" phylarchs as a fixed traditional set rather than an ad hoc list.

1 Chronicles 1:38 · Genesis 36:21 · Genesis 36:30

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H687 ʼEtser (in 5 vv) and H1787 Dîyshôwn (in 6 vv) at 1 Chronicles 1:38, Genesis 36:21 and Genesis 36:30; a real lexical link serving a framing structure, with no quotation claimed in either direction

The land of Uz, where Job is placed structural / thematic: confirmed

עוּץ (ʻÛwts, H5780) is the one word in this verse that reaches beyond the genealogy. It names Job's country at Job 1:1, and Lamentations 4:21 addresses "the daughter of Edom" as dwelling in the land of Uz, placing that territory in Edom's neighborhood, the very region this Horite list describes. Jeremiah 25:20 lists its kings among the nations given the cup. What the shared lexeme establishes is that a region bearing this name lay near Edom; it does not establish that the Horite Uz of this verse is the region's eponym. JFB, commenting a few verses earlier, records the related tradition that the Edomite king Jobab "is considered to be Job," attributing the identification to Forster; that tradition is reported here, not endorsed.

Job 1:1 · Lamentations 4:21 · Jeremiah 25:20

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5780 ʻÛwts (in 8 vv). The lexeme is too common to carry a verbal tier and the referents differ (a person here, a territory there), so the confirmed link is geographical and thematic only

Three men named Uz, one Strong's entry flagged: verify source

Strong's H5780 is glossed "Uts, a son of Aram, also a Seirite, and the regions settled by them." The lexicon has, in one entry, merged the Aramean Uz of Genesis 10:23, the Nahorite Uz of Genesis 22:21, and the Seirite Uz of this verse, plus the territory. The Verifier reports the shared lexeme honestly, but the identification behind the gloss is a lexicographer's judgment, not a statement of the text, and it is contested. This thread is flagged so the merge is not silently inherited: the verse before us names a Horite, and nothing in it says he is the man of Genesis 10 or Genesis 22.

Genesis 10:23 · Genesis 22:21

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H5780 ʻÛwts (in 8 vv), but the connection depends on Strong's own conflated gloss ('a son of Aram, also a Seirite, and the regions settled by them'); the identification of the three bearers is disputed and is not asserted by any verse

Bilhan the Horite and Bilhan the Benjaminite structural / thematic: confirmed

בִּלְהָן (H1092) is rare enough (3 verses) that its reappearance inside Chronicles itself is worth recording: at 1 Chronicles 7:10 a Bilhan stands in the genealogy of Benjamin. Strong's admits both, glossing the name as "the name of an Edomite and of an Israelite." The lexical link is real; the men are not the same, and no commentator in this unit's sources claims they are. The tier is deliberately held below verbal because a recurring proper name in two unrelated registers is not a quotation.

1 Chronicles 7:10

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1092 Bilhân (in 3 vv). Rare, but a shared proper name borne by two distinct men per Strong's own gloss, so the link is onomastic, not quotational; deliberately downgraded from verbal

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The names the line is not ancient/widely-held

⚙ The Chronicler's first nine chapters run from Adam to the returned exiles, and Henry marks the turn at this section: "The genealogy is from hence confined to the posterity of Abraham." Confinement is the point. Before the line narrows, it records with equal care the peoples it passes over, and this verse is the last breath of that record: Bilhan, Zaavan, Jaakan, Uz, Aran, Horites whose land Esau's sons absorbed. Matthew opens his Gospel by resuming exactly this literary form, a book of generations running to Jesus Christ through David and Abraham, and Paul takes the Esau branch as the standing case of a line chosen and a line passed by. That the promise runs through a genealogy at all, and that the genealogy is honest enough to name the neighbors it does not run through, is the ancient and widely held reading of these chapters. What is not claimed here is any messianic content in the five names themselves.

Matthew 1:1 · Romans 9:10-13

Uz: a Redeemer sought outside the covenant line novel

⚙ The single word in this verse with reach is עוּץ (H5780), and the place it reaches is Job 1:1, "a man in the land of Uz." The Verifier confirms only the shared lexeme, and the honest position is that the verse names a Horite while Job names a territory; the two are linked by name, not by a claim in the text. But the canon does put its sharpest cry for a mediator in the mouth of a man placed outside Abraham's line, in country that Lamentations 4:21 associates with Edom: Job 9:33 wants an arbiter who could lay a hand on both parties, and Job 19:25 answers with a living Redeemer who will stand at the last. JFB records, on Forster's authority, an old tradition identifying the Edomite king Jobab of 1 Chronicles 1:44 with Job. That tradition is reported, not relied on. The reading offered here is that the Chronicler's willingness to keep Edom's and Seir's names in Israel's book runs in the same direction as the answer Job received: the Redeemer sought from outside the line is the one in whom, as Paul has it, there is neither Jew nor Greek. This particular joining of Uz in the Horite list to the Redeemer of Job is a novel synthesis of this tool and should be tested as such.

Job 1:1 · Job 9:33 · Job 19:25

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:

  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB (CC0) with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbering. Two places where the English and the Hebrew diverge should be stated plainly. (1) BSB prints "Dishan" where the Hebrew of this verse has דִישׁ֖וֹן (ḏî·šō·wn), H1787, glossed by Strong's as "Dishon, the name of two Edomites." (2) BSB prints "and Akan" where the Hebrew has יַעֲקָ֑ן (Jaakan) and the parse records no conjunctive waw, so both the initial yod and the absence of "and" are translational decisions. The trailing pe on the last word is a Masoretic paragraph marker, not part of the name.

Sources: of the eight commentators in this unit, Poole has no text on this verse and Geneva's entry reproduces the verse plus a section header, so neither is quoted. Barnes' note here concerns a spelling difference at 1 Chronicles 1:30 and 1:41, not v. 42. JFB comments from v. 37 across the surrounding block and is cited only where that scope is stated. Henry's Concise note is headed "28-54" and Pulpit's "Verses 42-50," so both are applications to a range that includes this verse rather than expositions of it; each quotation carries an editorial note saying so. The K&D entry is capped in the brief and was not expanded, so nothing is claimed from its closing lines.

Uncertain: whether the "sons" of this list are individuals or clans (the lexicon's range for bên permits both and the verse does not decide); whether the Uz of this verse stands behind the land of Uz in Job and Lamentations; whether the Bilhan here and the Bilhan of 1 Chronicles 7:10 are related in any way beyond the name. Each of these is recorded as open rather than resolved, and the Strong's conflation of three men named Uz under one entry is flagged in the threads for that reason. No source quotation in this unit has been paraphrased, modernized or stitched.

✦ = 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)