The Fallible Study Bible

The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible

1 Chronicles4:7–8

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

1 Chronicles 4:7–8 — . 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.

7

The sons of Helah were Zereth, Zohar, Ethnan,

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

ū·ḇə·nê ḥel·’āh ṣe·reṯ yiṣ·ḥå̄r wə·’eṯ·nān

Word by word5 · parsed
וּבְנֵ֖יū·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
bên: son, builder of the family name Conjunctive waw plus the masculine plural construct of H1121. The plural construct ū·ḇə·nê is the chronicler's hinge, the seam he uses to bolt one fragment of Judah onto the next without narrative. Note the lexicon's own breadth: H1121 covers grandson, subject, nation, even quality or condition, so a construct chain like this can be strict paternity or corporate descent, and the Chronicler never tells us which he means here.
חֶלְאָ֑הḥel·’āhof HelahH2458
√ Chelʼâh — Chelah, an IsraelitessNounproperfeminine singular
Chelʼâh: Chelah, an Israelitess H2458 is genuinely rare: the Verifier finds the lexeme in only two verses, this one and 1 Chronicles 4:5, which are the whole of what Scripture says about her. Her one recorded act is bearing these three sons. That is the entire canonical weight of her name, and it is enough for the register to keep it.
צֶ֥רֶתṣe·reṯ[were] ZerethH6889
√ Tsereth — Tsereth, an IsraeliteNounpropermasculine singular
H6889, a name the rest of Scripture never uses again. Gill's whole comment on the three is that they are nowhere else mentioned, and K&D says the same.
יִצְחָרyiṣ·ḥå̄rZoharH3328
√ Yitschar — Jitschar, an IsraeliteConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Yitschar: Jitschar, an Israelite Here the manuscript tradition shows its seam. The parse in the interlinear reads a conjunctive waw on a surface that, as written, carries none, which is exactly the Kethibh and Keri divergence K&D describes: יצחר written, וצחר read. K&D also shuts the door on the easy harmonization, insisting the Simeonite and Hittite bearers of the name have nothing to do with the son of Helah. A verse of four words is carrying a textual decision.
וְאֶתְנָֽן׃wə·’eṯ·nānEthnanH869
√ ʼEthnan — Ethnan, an IsraeliteConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
H869, Ethnan. The lexicon in this brief glosses it only as a personal name, so we record what is sourced and refuse the guess: readers who hear in these consonants the noun for a harlot's hire are working from a different entry than the one the brief supplies, and the link is unverified here.
8

and Koz, who was the father of Anub and Zobebah and of the clans of Aharhel son of Harum.

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wə·qō·wṣ hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- ‘ā·nūḇ wə·’eṯ- haṣ·ṣō·ḇê·ḇāh ū·miš·pə·ḥō·wṯ ’ă·ḥar·ḥêl ben- hā·rūm

Word by word10 · parsed
וְק֣וֹץwə·qō·wṣand KozH6976
√ Qôwts — Kots, the name of two IsraelitesConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Qôwts: Kots, the name of two Israelites H6976 is rare, occurring in only six verses across the canon (the Verifier lists 1 Chronicles 24:10, Ezra 2:61, Nehemiah 3:4, Nehemiah 3:21 and Nehemiah 7:63 alongside this one). K&D is precise about the form: bare קוץ occurs only here, while every other occurrence is הקּוץ with the article, of a Levite. So the rare lexeme is a real link and the identification of persons is not, which is exactly the distinction Cambridge insists on.
הוֹלִ֔ידhō·w·lîḏwho was the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil) The causative stem turns a birth-verb into a fathering-verb: he caused offspring to be brought forth. This is the load-bearing word of the whole verse and the engine of the Chronicler's first nine chapters. Its strain shows here, because it is made to generate both a named son and, without a second verb, the clans of Aharhel: descent language stretched from a household to a social structure in a single perfect.
אֶת־’eṯ-H853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Direct object marker
Direct object marker, H853. Untranslatable; it simply fixes Anub as the object.
עָנ֖וּב‘ā·nūḇAnubH6036
√ ʻÂnûwb — Anub, an IsraeliteNounpropermasculine singular
ʻÂnûwb: Anub, an Israelite Ellicott connects the name with Anab in the hill country near Debir (Joshua 11:21; 15:50) and reads it as grape-town, which is why he hears Matthew 7:16 behind the sentence. Register his hedge honestly: he writes that the word appears to mean this. The etymology is a proposal, and the brief's lexicon gives only the personal name.
וְאֶת־wə·’eṯ-andH853
√ ʼêth — properly, self (but generally used to point out more definitely the object of a verb or preposition, even or namely)Conjunctive wawDirect object marker
Conjunctive waw plus the object marker; it coordinates the second object with the first.
הַצֹּבֵבָ֑הhaṣ·ṣō·ḇê·ḇāhZobebahH6637
√ Tsôbêbâh — Tsobebah, an IsraelitessArticleNounpropermasculine singular
Tsôbêbâh: Tsobebah, an Israelitess The article is parsed here as Article plus Noun proper, an unusual pairing that often signals a place name or a clan name rather than an individual. Ellicott renders it she that goeth softly and guesses a neighbouring brook, comparing Isaiah 8:6. The interlinear parse says masculine singular, the lexicon says Israelitess, and Ellicott's participle is feminine: three sourced witnesses that do not agree, and we do not pretend to resolve them.
וּמִשְׁפְּח֥וֹתū·miš·pə·ḥō·wṯand of the clansH4940
√ mishpâchâh — a family, iConjunctive wawNounfeminine plural construct
mishpâchâh: a family, a clan H4940, feminine plural construct. Unlike the names around it this is a common noun, found in 224 verses, the ordinary Pentateuchal word for the kinship unit between the household and the tribe (Numbers 3:21, 3:27, 3:30; Joshua 19:31; Leviticus 20:5). Its appearance here is the hinge of the verse: the register stops listing individuals and starts listing corporate bodies, which is why Ellicott finds the literal reading of begat the clans so strained.
אֲחַרְחֵ֖ל’ă·ḥar·ḥêlof AharhelH316
√ ʼĂcharchêl — Acharchel, an IsraeliteNounpropermasculine singular
ʼĂcharchêl: Acharchel, an Israelite H316, found nowhere else in Scripture. Ellicott parses the name as behind the rampart; Pulpit answers that nothing has yet been produced in elucidation of any one of these persons. Both statements are in the brief, and the honest reading holds them together: a suggestive etymology and a blank historical record.
בֶּן־ben-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 singular construct
Construct of H1121; here it functions as the ordinary filiation link, son of.
הָרֽוּם׃hā·rūmof HarumH2037
√ Hârum — Harum, an IsraeliteNounpropermasculine singular
Hârum: Harum, an Israelite H2037, another single-occurrence name. Ellicott glosses it the elevated and floats a conjecture that Harum was the citadel of these clans, that is, a height rather than a man, which would make the whole phrase topographical. He offers it as a guess and we pass it on as one.

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. A woman, three sons, and a gap in the text — 4:7

Four Hebrew words. A construct plural וּבְנֵ֖י (H1121), a mother's name parsed feminine singular, and three sons. Gill's entire comment is that they are nowhere else mentioned, and K&D agrees they are not elsewhere met with; the Chronicler is not telling a story, he is closing a ledger line. Yet even here the page is not smooth. K&D records that the second name stands as Kethibh יצחר against a Keri וצחר, and then refuses the harmonizing move, holding that the Simeonite and Hittite bearers of that name have nothing to do with the son of Helah. Poole, reading for sense rather than for manuscripts, argues something has dropped out, since and Koz at the head of v. 8 belongs to this list, and he points to parallel ellipses at the ends of 2 Chronicles 4:13 and 7:18. Two different sourced judgments, one textual and one syntactic, both saying the same thing about the surface: it is damaged or elliptical, and it was kept anyway.

ii. The verb that has to carry too much — 4:8

⚙ The grammatical center of v. 8 is הוֹלִ֔יד, Hifil perfect of yâlad (H3205), he caused to be born. It governs two marked objects, Anub and the-Zobebah, each pinned by אֶת־ (H853). Then, with no second verb, it is made to govern וּמִשְׁפְּח֥וֹת (H4940), the clans of Aharhel. Ellicott is the one who says plainly that Coz begat the clans of Aharhel son of Harum is hardly intelligible if taken literally. That is the honest state of the sentence: a birth verb stretched over a social structure. Ellicott then offers etymologies for the names it produces, Anub as grape-town near Debir, Zobebah as she that goeth softly, Aharhel as behind the rampart, Harum as the elevated and perhaps a citadel rather than a person; and he offers them, by his own wording, as what the words appear to mean.

iii. The commentators' shared confession — 4:7-4:8

What is unusual about this unit is the unanimity of the sourced voices about their own ignorance. Pulpit: the link of connection between these persons and the tribe of Judah is utterly unknown, and nothing has yet been produced in elucidation of any one of them. Cambridge: the connexion of this verse with the preceding does not appear, and the names are not otherwise known. K&D: 4:8-10 is a fragment whose connection with the sons of Judah in chapter 2 is not clear. Gill, twice: nowhere else read. Ellicott alone tries to bridge the gap, arguing from the Jabez of 1 Chronicles 2:55 that vv. 8-10 continue the list begun at v. 5 and so concern clans of the Hurites, and he marks his own step as an assumption the chronicler does not expressly state. Henry does not comment on these two verses at all; his note runs past them to Jabez, and JFB and Barnes likewise carry material aimed at neighbouring verses. Even the Targum, reported by Gill, tries to fill the silence by identifying Aharhel with Hur, and Gill judges it not at all probable. Five independent expositors, one verdict: the register is preserved without its explanation.

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

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested by Scripture. Two verses that tell us nothing we can use are still Scripture, and what they are is a list of people God kept. The rare lexeme H2458 puts Helah in exactly two verses of the Bible, both of them here; H316 Aharhel and H2037 Harum occur once each in the whole canon. By every measure a historian would use, these names failed to matter. They are in the book anyway. And the one common word in the passage is the tell: mishpâchâh (H4940), the clan word of Numbers and Joshua, the unit by which the land was apportioned and the census taken. The Chronicler is writing to a returned community that had just been asked, at Ezra 2:61 and Nehemiah 7:63, to prove who it was, and could not always do it. Into that anxiety he writes down Anub and Zobebah and the clans of Aharhel son of Harum, who explain nothing and belong to no story, and he does not explain them either. The claim of the passage is not made by its content but by its existence: the covenant record is longer than the covenant narrative. Pulpit's confession that the connection is utterly unknown should be read as data, not embarrassment. God's register keeps names that human memory has already lost, which is a different and harder comfort than being remembered by men.

The following line is the tool's synthesis and not Scripture: a name nobody can explain is still a name God wrote down.

⚙

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.

Helah, present in the whole Bible twice verbal / quotation: confirmed

The Verifier finds חֶלְאָ֑ה (H2458) in only two verses, 1 Chronicles 4:5 and this one, and they are the two halves of a single sentence about Ashhur's household: v. 5 names her, v. 7 records what she bore. K&D reads v. 5 with v. 7 in exactly this way, calling her the first wife. The link here is not allusion but identity of reference, and it is as tight as a lexical link can be, because the lexeme has nowhere else to go.

1 Chronicles 4:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H2458 Chelʼâh, occurring in only 2 verses of the canon (1 Chronicles 4:5 and 4:7); maximally rare, though the link is a shared proper name within one list, not a quotation

Koz and the sons of Hakkoz verbal / quotation: confirmed

וְק֣וֹץ (H6976) is rare, appearing in six verses: this one, 1 Chronicles 24:10, Ezra 2:61, Nehemiah 3:4, Nehemiah 3:21 and Nehemiah 7:63. K&D pins the formal difference exactly: the bare קוץ occurs only here, while the others read הקּוץ with the article, of a Levite. So the lexeme is genuinely shared and genuinely uncommon, and that is the whole of what the Verifier certifies. Nehemiah 3:4 and 3:21 give us Meremoth son of Uriah son of Hakkoz repairing the wall, work done by a house whose priestly standing was in question.

1 Chronicles 24:10 · Ezra 2:61 · Nehemiah 3:4 · Nehemiah 3:21

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6976 Qôwts, in 6 verses total; a rare lexeme, but the shared item is a name and the passages make no quotation of one another

Whether this Koz is that Hakkoz flagged: verify source

⚙ The lexicon itself says H6976 is the name of two Israelites, which is already a warning. Cambridge states the case against identification without hedging: the Revised Version prints Hakkoz as at 1 Chronicles 24:10, but there a different person or family is meant. K&D notes that Nehemiah 3:4 carries no statement of the tribe the sons of Hakkoz belonged to, leaving the tribal question open rather than answered. Against that, Nehemiah 7:63 and Ezra 2:61 record a house that could not produce its genealogy and was put from the priesthood, and a Judahite Koz whose line runs into unplaceable clans is a tempting candidate. Tempting is not evidence. We record the lexical link as certified and the identification of persons as contested and, on the sourced commentary in front of us, denied.

Nehemiah 7:63 · Ezra 2:61

basis: Shared lexeme H6976 is Verifier-confirmed, but the proposed identification of the Judahite Koz with the priestly Hakkoz house is contested: Cambridge explicitly denies it and K&D notes the tribe is unstated at Nehemiah 3:4

Clans: the unit the land was measured by structural / thematic: confirmed

וּמִשְׁפְּח֥וֹת (H4940 mishpâchâh) is the one ordinary noun in this unit, and it is the standing administrative word of the wilderness census and the Joshua allotments: Numbers 3:21, 3:27 and 3:30 order the Levites by it; Joshua 19:31, 19:32, 19:40 and 21:34 distribute territory by it; Leviticus 20:5 and Amos 3:1 use it for the body that bears guilt and judgment together. When the Chronicler's verb reaches past Anub and Zobebah to the clans of Aharhel, he has switched from household to this register. Ellicott's puzzlement at the construction is the trace of the switch.

Numbers 3:21 · Joshua 19:31 · Leviticus 20:5 · Amos 3:1

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H4940 mishpâchâh (in 224 verses); far too common to carry a verbal claim, so the link is the shared census-and-allotment pattern the word belongs to, not quotation

Grape-town and the tree known by its fruit flagged: verify source

⚙ Ellicott compares Anub with Anâb of Joshua 11:21 and 15:50, a town in the hill country near Debir, says the word appears to mean grape-town, and remarks that Coz begat Anub therefore reminds us of Matthew 7:16, adding Isaiah 5:6 and 7:23 where vineyards go to briers and thorns. The wordplay he is hearing is that Koz means thorn, by his own gloss, and a thorn begets a grape. It is a fine reading and it is built on an etymology he marks as uncertain, on a link between a Judahite name and a Judahite town that the text does not assert, and across the Testaments, where no shared lexeme can exist because the languages differ. We keep it and flag it.

Joshua 15:50 · Isaiah 5:6 · Matthew 7:16

basis: No shared lexeme is possible for the Matthew link (Greek against Hebrew), and the Hebrew end rests on Ellicott's own hedged etymology of H6036 Anub as grape-town and H6976 Qôwts as thorn, neither of which the brief's lexicon supplies

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The tribe these unknowns belong to ancient/widely-held

⚙ Whatever else is obscure, the file these names sit in is not. JFB heads the section Posterity of Judah, and Henry opens the chapter calling Judah the most numerous and most famous of all the tribes. These are Judahites: Anub, Zobebah, Aharhel son of Harum, clansmen of the tribe from which, Hebrews 7:14 says, it is evident our Lord arose, and which Revelation 5:5 names in the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Matthew's genealogy runs the same tribal line and, like the Chronicler, stops to name people no story ever returns to. The reading is the ordinary apostolic one: the Messiah comes out of a recorded, traceable, unglamorous tribe, and most of that tribe is a list.

Matthew 1:3 · Hebrews 7:14 · Revelation 5:5

The register that could not be produced novel

⚙ H6976, the rare lexeme of v. 8, surfaces at Ezra 2:61 and Nehemiah 7:63 in the account of a house that sought its register among those reckoned by genealogy and could not find it, and was therefore put from the priesthood as unclean. Whether that house is this Koz is disputed, as our flagged thread says. But the pressure the Chronicler is writing under is not disputed: in the restoration, a name that could not be found in a book cost a man his standing at the altar. That is the exact shape of the promise Christ gives his disciples in Luke 10:20, that their names are written in heaven, and of the last register in Revelation 21:27, where entry turns on being written in the Lamb's book of life. ⚙ Our synthesis is that the Chronicler's obsessive keeping of unexplained names is the Old Testament's practice run at that assurance; we mark the specific linking of 1 Chronicles 4:8 to those texts as our own construction, not a received reading.

Ezra 2:61 · Nehemiah 7:63 · Luke 10:20 · Revelation 21:27

A thorn that begets a grape novel

⚙ Ellicott's own note supplies the figure: Koz is thorn, Anub appears to mean grape-town, and the sentence therefore reminds him of Matthew 7:16, where men do not gather grapes of thorns. He also sends the reader to Isaiah 5:6 and 7:23, the vineyard given over to briers. If the etymologies hold, the verse is a small sign against the grain of that judgment: in Judah's record a thorn does produce a grape, and the vineyard Isaiah 5 abandons is the vineyard the true Vine reclaims in John 15:1. We hold this loosely. Ellicott hedges his etymology, the brief's lexicon supplies only personal names, and the whole figure would collapse if the derivations fail.

Matthew 7:16 · Isaiah 5:6 · John 15:1

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:

  • Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, — (1880s)
  • Charles Ellicott, Commentary for English Readers (1878)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible (1685)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB with the Berean interlinear and Strong's numbering. This unit is two verses, thirteen words of Hebrew all told, and eleven of the fifteen lexicon entries behind it are proper names glossed only as an Israelite or an Israelitess. That is the first honesty note: there is very little lexical content here to reason from.

Known textual uncertainty. K&D reports a Kethibh and Keri divergence at 1 Chronicles 4:7 (written יצחר, read וצחר); the interlinear parse for that word lists a conjunctive waw that the printed Kethibh surface does not show, which is the same seam. Poole holds that and Coz has dropped from the end of v. 7, and Ellicott independently suspects the words And Coz fell out of the Hebrew. We record the proposals; neither is a manuscript reading we can verify from the brief.

Parsing conflict, unresolved. At 4:8 word 5, הַצֹּבֵבָ֑ה is parsed Article plus Noun proper masculine singular, the brief's lexicon calls Tsôbêbâh an Israelitess, and Ellicott reads the form as a feminine participle meaning she that goeth softly. Three sourced witnesses, three different answers on gender and referent. We have not harmonized them.

Etymologies. Every gloss in this unit for Anub, Zobebah, Aharhel and Harum comes from Ellicott, who hedges at least one of them with appears to mean, and the sense thorn for Koz is likewise his. The brief's lexicon supplies none of these meanings. Any reading that depends on them, including our grape-and-thorn thread and the third christ note, is flagged or marked novel for that reason.

Commentary coverage is thin and the voices say so. Henry's note on these verses is his chapter-level note on 4:1-43 and is aimed at Jabez; Barnes and JFB likewise carry comment attached to neighbouring verses rather than to 4:7-8, so we have not drawn excerpts from them here. Poole has no text on 4:8 at all. Gill reports a Targumic identification of Aharhel with Hur and judges it not at all probable; we follow him and do not use it. Pulpit, Cambridge and K&D each state that the connection of these persons to Judah is unknown, and no synthesis in this unit should be read as supplying it.

✦ = 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)