1 Chronicles4:24–43

i. Five names, and the one branch that grew — 4:24-27

The register opens with five sons where Genesis 46:10 and Exodus 6:15 have six. Ellicott lays the three Pentateuch lists side by side and finds that "Numbers agrees with the Chronicles in naming five, the Ohad of Genesis and Exodus being omitted"; K&D supply the reason as a probability, that Ohad's posterity "had either died out, or had so dwindled away that it could form no independent family." Poole and Benson both prefer the softer explanation that Hebrews commonly bore two or three names, and JFB say the same. K&D alone press further and call יריב "a transcriber's error for יכין," with Pulpit independently suspecting "an early corruption of resh for caph and beth for nun." So the unit begins by showing its seams: three of five names are unstable across the canon, and the commentators divide on whether that is alternative naming or copying error.

Then the chain narrows. Verse 25 and verse 26 are six words each and three of them are the same word, בְּנוֹ, his son, which BSB renders only once. Gill takes the chain strictly ("Mishma the son of Mibsam"); K&D trace it "through six generations to one Shimei" and admit the plural heading at v. 26 divides the list for reasons "unknown." Everything then rests on Shimei: sixteen sons and six daughters, against brothers for whom אֵין, Strong's non-entity particle, does the work. Ellicott presses the Hiphil: "Rather, nor did they multiply their whole clan," the word clan "here used in the wider sense of tribe." Benson and Poole, in nearly identical words, name the cause outside the text, "God's curse upon them delivered by the mouth of holy Jacob" at Genesis 49; Ellicott cites the same verse and adds the outcome, that Simeon "appears to have ultimately been absorbed by Judah." K&D stay with the arithmetic and point to the wilderness censuses. Cambridge adds only that the Septuagint reads three daughters, not six. ⚙ The Chronicler himself assigns no cause; he states a shortfall and measures it, with עַד, against Judah.

ii. Thirteen cities inside another tribe's portion — 4:28-33

The settlement list is Joshua 19:2-8 copied with small differences, as Ellicott, Poole, Gill, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D all state. K&D count "in all eighteen cities, divided into two groups, numbering thirteen and five respectively," and catalogue the divergences as either different forms of one name or different names for one city. The towns are descriptions before they are addresses: Ellicott translates Beth-marcaboth "house of chariots" and Hazar-susim "village of horses," and reads Beth-birei as a corruption of Beth-lebaoth, "house of lionesses," adding drily that "There were lions in the wilds of Judah." Cambridge wonders whether the chariot and horse towns "may have been royal chariot-cities." And Hormah, in v. 30, is châram made into a place name: the tribe lives in a town called Devoted-to-Destruction and will perform that devoting in v. 41.

The disputed phrase is v. 31's "until the reigning of David." Four positions stand in the brief. Gill reports Kimchi and other Jewish writers that David "expelled them from thence, and restored them to the tribe of Judah," and Geneva's marginal gloss says the same in one line. Benson, Poole and JFB supply a moral cause: JFB, that "In consequence of the sloth or cowardice of the Simeonites" the cities were theirs only nominally, and that the tribe forfeited its claim. Barnes refuses the moralising and offers a source-critical alternative: "Perhaps the writer is quoting from a document belonging to David's reign." Cambridge goes further and denies the terminus altogether: the clause "does not necessarily mean that these cities ceased to belong to Simeon after David's day." ⚙ The verb מְלֹךְ is a bare infinitive and the clause is verbless; it fixes a limit and names no reason, and the sloth of Simeon is supplied by the commentators, not by the Chronicler.

What the section does say, in its last three words, is decisive. Ellicott renders וְהִתְיַחְשָׂם "they had their own registration" and draws the conclusion: "though their settlements lay within the territory of Judah, their clans were registered as belonging to a distinct tribe." Pulpit and K&D agree on the grammar, an infinitive used as a noun; Barnes alone attaches the register to the places rather than to the people. A tribe that cannot hold its towns still holds its column in the book.

iii. Thirteen princes, and a valley that was quiet — 4:34-41

Twenty-two names arrive without introduction. Ellicott calls them "The thirteen princes (emirs) of Simeon who headed the expedition of their tribe in the age of Hezekiah" and adds: "None of them are otherwise known." Gill says they were "famous men in the tribe of Simeon, of rank and dignity," then concedes "though they are nowhere else taken notice of." K&D note that although some are traced through several generations, "in no case are they traced down so far as to show their connection with the families named in 1 Chronicles 4:24-26." The register that took such care to link Shaul to Shimei cannot link Shimei to these men. Pulpit, weighing it, will say only that of these names "just so much is known as is here written."

Verse 38 supplies the motive in one verb: פָּרְצוּ, from pârats, "to break out." Ellicott: "Finding their territory too strait for them under these conditions... the Simeonite chieftains went forth at the head of their clans to seek new settlements"; Poole, more bluntly, that the increase "forced them to seek for new and larger habitations." K&D correct a detail of rank that matters: "Princes in their families are not heads of families, but heads of fathers'-houses." Then the destination, and a real textual crux. Barnes reads "Gerar" with the Septuagint; Cambridge agrees that the Gedor of Joshua 15:58 "seems an unlikely scene in the days of Hezekiah" and calls Gerar "perhaps rightly." K&D refuse both, arguing that מְבוֹא is not "entrance" at all but the going down of the sun, a designation of the west, and that the Simeonite towns "all lie to the east of Gerar." Pulpit sides with the caution: the emendation "cannot be regarded as altogether satisfactory." ⚙ We do not know where they went.

What they found is described in four adjectives the English cannot carry at full weight: fat, good, broad of two hands, quiet and at ease. Ellicott notes the literal "broad of both hands" and hears Laish in the last pair (Judges 18:7); K&D hear it too, and conclude only "that they were a peaceful shepherd people, who dwelt in tents, and were therefore nomads." Benson turns it devotional, to "that God, who appoints the bounds o four habitation." Then v. 41. The Hiphil וַיַּחֲרִימֻם is the verb of the ban. Ellicott is unflinching about both the act and its context: "Devoted them to God for destruction," and "This practice was not peculiar to Israel, but was common to the Semitic races," citing Mesha of Moab devoting seven thousand at Nebo to ‘Ashtar-Chemosh. K&D reduce the religious charge, arguing the word had "gradually lost its original religious signification" and now meant simple extirpation; they then reject in a footnote Bertheau's picture of Simeonites "impelled by holy enthusiasm," since the narrative "knows no other motive for the whole undertaking than the purely earthly need to seek and find new pasture lands." Gill, by contrast, supplies the justification the text withholds: "these inhabitants being of this cursed race, the Simeonites scrupled not to dispossess them." ⚙ That is Gill's inference from Genesis 9 and 10, not this verse's reasoning, and we mark it as such. Benson notices what the conquest bought: the captivity came in Hezekiah's sixth year, so "their joy in their new, pleasant, and fruitful possessions, lasted but for a very little while."

iv. Five hundred to Seir, and the last of Amalek — 4:42-43

A second movement, and the commentators cannot agree whether it is the same campaign. Ellicott argues it must be close in time, since "of them" "can only refer to the clans whose emigration in the days of Hezekiah has been the subject of this section." Pulpit argues the opposite: "It is, on the whole, most natural to consider that one event concludes with ver. 41, and that the following events (vers. 42, 43) are distinct and independent." K&D take the captains as "four chiefs of the sons of Shimei" and date it "most probably in the second half of Hezekiah's reign," while admitting "It is not said at what time this was done." Gill preserves a rabbinic tradition, reported through Kimchi, that the four captains were of Manasseh, and then argues against it from the text. ⚙ Four honest reconstructions; the Hebrew gives a perfect verb, הָלְכוּ, not the consecutive imperfect that has driven the narrative since v. 39, which is itself a hint of a separate notice, though not proof of one.

The object of the strike is שְׁאֵרִית, the remnant, in apposition with הַפְּלֵטָה, the escaped. Ellicott: "Literally, the remnant of the survivors ( pelêtâh, an abstract collective word) belonging to Amalek." Cambridge identifies them as "the descendants of those who had escaped from Saul (1 Samuel 15)," sheltering in Edomite country, "for Mount Seir is a synonym for the land of Edom." K&D say the same and add the word Chronicles will not say: "extirpated." The unit ends with עַד הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה, to this day, and both Barnes and Pulpit warn that the phrase dates the source, not the Chronicler: Barnes, that these words "are probably taken from the record which the writer of Chronicles had before him"; Pulpit, that it marks the date "of the document or authority upon which he as a compiler drew." Benson and Poole, reading it of the Chronicler's own day, build on it a survival theory for a Simeonite remnant in Seir after the northern deportation. ⚙ The phrase will bear either; we record both and decide neither.