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1 Chronicles6:4

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1 Chronicles 6:4 — . 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.

4

Eleazar was the father of Phinehas, Phinehas was the father of Abishua,

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

’el·‘ā·zār hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- pî·nə·ḥās pî·nə·ḥās hō·lîḏ ’eṯ- ’ă·ḇî·šū·a‘

Word by word8 · parsed
אֶלְעָזָר֙’el·‘ā·zārEleazarH499
√ ʼElʻâzâr — Elazar, the name of seven IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
ʼElʻâzâr: Elazar, the name of seven Israelites The register begins not with Aaron but with Aaron's third son, and the omission is the point. Gill records that Nadab and Abihu "were destroyed by fire from heaven for offering strange fire" (Leviticus 10:1) and that Eleazar "succeeded his father in the high priesthood." So the first word of the verse is already a verdict: the line that continues is the line that did not bring strange fire, and the Chronicler starts counting from there.
הוֹלִ֣ידhō·w·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil perfect 3ms) The Hifil makes the father the causer of the birth, and the perfect makes it a completed fact, not an ongoing state. K&D reads the whole chain 6:4-15 as a succession list of high priests rather than a bare pedigree, since "the son so begotten was, when he lived after his father, the heir of the high-priestly dignity." The verb therefore does double duty: it transmits blood and it transmits office.
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
ʼêth: sign of the definite object Untranslatable function word; it fixes the following name as the object.
פִּֽינְחָ֔סpî·nə·ḥāsPhinehasH6372
√ Pîynᵉchâç — Pinechas, the name of three IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Pîynᵉchâç: Pinechas, the name of three Israelites Pulpit calls him "a memorable man" and gathers the file: Numbers 25:7-13, Joshua 22:10-33, Judges 20:28, Psalm 106:30-31. He is the only name in this verse the rest of Scripture actually tells stories about, and Judges 20:28 shows him still standing before the ark generations into the land. In a chapter of pure names, the Chronicler lets one name do the remembering for all of them.
פִּֽינְחָ֖סpî·nə·ḥāsPhinehasH6372
√ Pîynᵉchâç — Pinechas, the name of three IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Phinehas repeated, now without the object marker: he has moved from the received end of one clause to the giving end of the next.
הֹלִ֥ידhō·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil perfect 3ms) The second identical form. K&D notes that in genealogical lists הוליד "may express mediate procreation," so a generation can be silently skipped when a son died before his father; the verb is exact about descent and only approximate about the number of steps. That caution is the sources' own, and it is why the twenty-two names of 6:4-15 cannot simply be multiplied out into a chronology.
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
ʼêth: sign of the definite object The marker returns, closing the second clause in the same shape as the first.
אֲבִישֽׁוּעַ׃’ă·ḇî·šū·a‘AbishuaH50
√ ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ — Abishua, the name of two IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ: Abishua, the name of two Israelites A rare name: H50 occurs in only five verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, and Pulpit confirms he is "only mentioned in this chapter and Ezra 7:1-5." That rarity is what makes the link to Ezra 7:5 a real verbal one rather than a guess, and it is the point at which this list touches a man who, centuries later, will carry the law back to Jerusalem.

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. Two verbs and four names — 1 Chronicles 6:4

The verse has almost no vocabulary: two proper names repeated, one rare name, one verb used twice, and the object marker twice. The verb is הוֹלִיד (H3205 yâlad), Hifil perfect, "he caused to be born." K&D describes the whole register 6:4-15 as built by this word, "repeated with every name," and draws from it the older commentators' inference that what is being listed is not simply descent but the succession of high priests from Eleazar to Jehozadak. Gill traces the same line, noting that Eleazar "succeeded his father in the high priesthood" after Nadab and Abihu died at the altar, and that the line here runs "unto the Babylonish captivity." Barnes titles the section exactly so: the genealogy of the high priestly stem to the captivity. Henry supplies the motive: these families "were more concerned than any other Israelites, to preserve their descent clear," because their honours and privileges hung on it. A verse with no story is therefore a verse of legal record.

ii. The one name that has a story — 1 Chronicles 6:4

Phinehas stands twice in eight words, and he is the only man here the rest of the canon narrates. Pulpit calls him "a memorable man" and files the references: Numbers 25:7-13, Joshua 22:10-33, Judges 20:28, Psalm 106:30-31, adding Grove's comparison of that psalm with Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4:3. Cambridge's note on this verse points the same way (Numbers 25:7 ff; Numbers 31:6; Joshua 22:13 ff). K&D observes that Phinehas, son of Eleazar per Exodus 6:25, "is found in possession of it in Judges 20:28," which is how the commentators know the list is an office list and not only a family tree. ⚙ Our own observation, offered as such: the Chronicler does not retell any of it. He sets the zealot between a father and a son and lets the verb carry him. Abishua, by contrast, is a name with no narrative at all, and Pulpit is candid that Josephus's claims about him cannot be relied on, citing Josephus against Josephus.

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

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. Read alone, 1 Chronicles 6:4 is the least interesting verse in the chapter: A begat B, B begat C. But the sources agree on what the list is for, and they agree from the text itself, not from tradition alone: K&D and Barnes both read 6:4-15 as the roll of high priests down to the exile, and Gill says it ends at Jehozadak, who "went young into Babylon." So the verse is the opening entry of a ledger whose last line is a deportation. That is the honest shape of it. The office was given to be handed on, and handing on requires that the holder die. Even Phinehas, the one man here whose zeal the Psalter remembers, appears not as a hero but as a link, and his single verse is spent entirely on receiving and transmitting. K&D is also frank that the arithmetic strains, twenty-two names across roughly 863 years, and that a generation may have been passed over in silence. We do not smooth that; we record it. The line that follows is our own reading and not a verse.

A name that has no story of its own is still holding the door open for someone who will.

⚙

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 same three names, said again in the same chapter verbal / quotation: confirmed

1 Chronicles 6:50 carries this same sequence of three names again later in the chapter. The Verifier records all three proper-name lexemes as shared, including the rare אֲבִישׁוּעַ (H50), which occurs in only five verses. ⚙ Our reading: the repetition is not editorial clumsiness but the habit of a register that must be able to prove itself twice, which is Henry's point about a tribe whose "honours and privileges of their office depended upon their descent."

1 Chronicles 6:50

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv, rare), H6372 Pîynᵉchâç (in 24 vv), H499 ʼElʻâzâr (in 70 vv). The rarity of H50 makes this a genuine verbal repetition inside one book, not a motif resemblance. No quotation of one text by another is claimed.

Ezra's own pedigree runs through this verse verbal / quotation: confirmed

Ezra 7:5 carries the same three names, Abishua, Phinehas and Eleazar, inside the scribe's own pedigree, and Pulpit confirms from the other side that Abishua is "only mentioned in this chapter and Ezra 7:1-5." ⚙ Our reading: the ledger Gill says runs "unto the Babylonish captivity" is taken up again by a man on the far side of it, and his standing rests on the same links of the chain we are reading here.

Ezra 7:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv, rare), H6372 Pîynᵉchâç (in 24 vv), H499 ʼElʻâzâr (in 70 vv). H50's five-verse range across the whole Hebrew Bible makes the overlap verbal rather than coincidental; Pulpit independently limits Abishua to this chapter and Ezra 7:1-5.

Where Phinehas actually stood structural / thematic: confirmed

The narrative books put flesh on word 3. Numbers 25:7 and 25:11 have him act in the plague at Peor; Numbers 31:6 sends him out with the sacred vessels; Joshua 22:13, 22:31 and 22:32 make him the envoy who defuses the altar dispute; Judges 20:28 finds him still ministering before the ark. Cambridge's whole note on this verse is that reference list (Numbers 25:7 ff; Numbers 31:6; Joshua 22:13 ff), and Pulpit adds Psalm 106:30-31. K&D leans on Judges 20:28 to argue the office, not just the blood, is what the register tracks.

Numbers 25:11 · Numbers 31:6 · Joshua 22:31 · Judges 20:28

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6372 Pîynᵉchâç (in 24 vv) and H499 ʼElʻâzâr (in 70 vv) across all four refs. Both are moderately common personal names, so the link is a shared-person and shared-office motif, not a quotation; tiered structural rather than verbal for that reason.

A list that ends where Joshua's obituary ends structural / thematic: confirmed

Joshua 24:33 buries Eleazar in the hill of Phinehas his son, the last verse of the book. K&D dates the start of this register there, to an Eleazar "who died shortly after Joshua ( Joshua 24:33 )." ⚙ Our reading, offered as inference and not as a claim the text makes: the Chronicler's ledger opens at the exact seam where the conquest narrative closes, so the first entry of the priestly succession is also the first grave in the land.

Joshua 24:33

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H6372 Pîynᵉchâç (in 24 vv), H499 ʼElʻâzâr (in 70 vv). Common personal names, so the basis is shared persons in a shared transition, not verbal dependence. The chronological inference is Keil and Delitzsch's; the seam reading is ours.

Priests that death does not let continue typological

Hebrews 7:23-24 argues that the former priests were many in number because death prevented them from continuing, while the one who remains holds his priesthood permanently. ⚙ That is precisely the mechanism this verse encodes: הוֹלִיד must be said again and again because the last man who said it is dead. K&D reaches the same structural point from the Hebrew side, that the son "was, when he lived after his father, the heir of the high-priestly dignity." The link is figural and read backward from the New Testament, not a lexical one.

1 Chronicles 6:4 · Hebrews 7:23-24

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so no shared Strong's basis is possible and no verbal tier may be claimed. The basis is the repeated Hifil H3205 succession formula read against the argument of Hebrews 7:23-24; figural, widely held among Christian readers, and marked here as our inference rather than the Chronicler's stated intent.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The ledger of dying priests and the one who does not hand on ancient/widely-held

⚙ Henry, commenting on this very chapter, moves from descent to Christ without our help: ministers are now called "without any limit as to the families they came from," and "none but our great High Priest can make atonement for sin, nor can any be accepted but through his atonement." The verse before us is the first line of the register Barnes calls "the genealogy of the high priestly stem to the captivity" and Gill traces "unto the Babylonish captivity." Read as a whole, the list is an account of an office that has to keep changing hands. Hebrews takes up exactly that observation and argues the contrast. We do not claim the Chronicler intended it; we claim the apostolic writer read this kind of list and answered it.

Hebrews 7:23-24 · Hebrews 7:27

Reckoned to him for righteousness novel

Pulpit, citing Grove, compares Psalm 106:30-31 on Phinehas with Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4:3: the same reckoning language used of Abraham's faith is used of Phinehas's act. ⚙ Our extension, and we mark it as ours: the man standing in the middle of this verse is remembered in the Psalter under the vocabulary Paul uses to argue justification, which means even the priestly ledger of 1 Chronicles 6 has a page where the righteousness in question is credited rather than inherited. Paul's own argument in Romans 4 runs the other way from genealogy, and that is the tension worth holding, not resolving. This reading is a commentator's comparison pressed further by us, not a stated claim of the text.

Psalm 106:30-31 · Genesis 15:6 · Romans 4:3

A covenant of priesthood kept through a grave novel

⚙ The promise attached to Phinehas in Numbers 25:12-13 is a lasting priesthood, yet this verse shows the way that promise is actually kept: by a man begetting a son and then dying. Cambridge and Pulpit both route the reader from this name to Numbers 25, and K&D uses Judges 20:28 to show Phinehas still in office long after. ⚙ Our reading: every "lasting" priesthood in the Old Testament is kept by succession, which is to say it is kept across graves, and the New Testament's claim is that one priesthood is kept through a grave instead. Offered to be tested.

Numbers 25:12-13 · Judges 20:28 · Hebrews 7:16

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 for 1 Chronicles 6:4, with the Berean interlinear supplying eight words, two of them the untranslated object marker אֶת־ (H853). Note that the verse numbering differs between traditions: K&D's commentary on this passage is headed 1 Chronicles 5:30-41, which is the Hebrew numbering of the same material, so a reader comparing editions will find the same text under a different address.

Sources: Poole has no note on this verse. Barnes and JFB contribute only section headings, which we have used as headings and nothing more. Gill's note here is attached to the wider passage (his comment opens on the children of Amram) rather than to this verse alone, so we quote only what he says about Eleazar's succession and the extent of the line. The K&D entry is capped in our brief; the portion we hold is the argument about the twenty-two generations and the rival Ithamarite line, and we have not drawn on the roughly sixteen thousand characters beyond the cap.

What is uncertain: the lexicon gives no etymology for Eleazar, Phinehas or Abishua beyond "the name of" so many Israelites, and we have invented none. The chronology is genuinely contested: K&D calculates about 863 years for twenty-two generations, calls the resulting average "a very high one" while allowing it, and notes that הוליד in such lists "may express mediate procreation," that is, a grandson may be recorded as begotten by his grandfather. Josephus's statements about Abishua and the transfer of the office to Eli are reported by both Gill and Pulpit, but Pulpit explicitly says no reliance can be placed on them and sets Josephus against himself. We pass that dispute along unresolved.

✦ = 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)