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1 Chronicles6:5

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

1 Chronicles 6:5 — . 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.

5

Abishua was the father of Bukki, Bukki was the father of Uzzi,

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wa·’ă·ḇî·šū·a‘ hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- buq·qî ū·ḇuq·qî hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- ‘uz·zî

Word by word8 · parsed
וַאֲבִישׁ֙וּעַ֙wa·’ă·ḇî·šū·a‘AbishuaH50
√ ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ — Abishua, the name of two IsraelitesConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ: Abishua, the name of two Israelites The conjunctive waw means this is not a fresh start but the next link: Abishua has already been handed to us in 1 Chronicles 6:4. Strong's own gloss concedes the name belongs to two different Israelites, which is why lexical matching alone cannot tell you whether a hit is this priest or the Benjamite Abishua of 1 Chronicles 8:4.
הוֹלִ֣ידhō·w·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil perfect, 3ms) The Hifil is causative, and the perfect is flat and finished: he caused a son to be born, and that is all that is said of him. K&D makes this verb the hinge of the whole register, observing that the son so begotten was, when he outlived his father, heir of the high priestly dignity, so that a list of births is functionally a list of successions. K&D also does the arithmetic and finds it strained: roughly 863 years from Aaron's death to the exile of Jehozadak across twenty-two generations, an average he calls high but not impossible.
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: marker of the definite direct object Untranslated by necessity; it simply pins Bukki as the definite object of the verb.
בֻּקִּ֔יbuq·qîBukkiH1231
√ Buqqîy — Bukki, the name of two IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Buqqîy: Bukki, the name of two Israelites A genuinely rare name: the Verifier finds it in only four verses of the canon. Two of those, 1 Chronicles 6:51 and Ezra 7:4, are this same priestly succession recited again for a different purpose; the fourth, Numbers 34:22, is a Danite prince, a different man behind an identical lexeme. The Pulpit Commentary notes of Bukki and the four names after him that they reappear in Ezra 7 "but that little or nothing else is known of them."
וּבֻקִּ֖יū·ḇuq·qîBukkiH1231
√ Buqqîy — Bukki, the name of two IsraelitesConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
Buqqîy: Bukki (conjunctive waw) The son of the first clause becomes the subject of the second, joined by a plain "and." Genealogy in Hebrew advances by relay.
הוֹלִ֥ידhō·w·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil perfect, 3ms) The identical form, unvaried. Chronicles will not decorate the verb, and the flatness is the point: nothing is recorded to distinguish one generation from the next except that it came next. Barnes sums the whole stretch in a single line, "The genealogy of the high priestly stem to the captivity."
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: object marker Again present in Hebrew, again invisible in English.
עֻזִּֽי׃‘uz·zîUzziH5813
√ ʻUzzîy — Uzzi, the name of six IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
ʻUzzîy: Uzzi, the name of six Israelites The verse ends on the one name in it that the commentators will not leave alone. Benson, Poole and JFB each record the supposition that in Uzzi's days the high priesthood passed from Eleazar's family to Ithamar's, and all three concede the cause is now unknown. Gill traces the claim to Josephus (Antiquities 5.11.5) and to the Jewish chronicle Juchasin, adding that it stayed with Ithamar, beginning with Eli, until Solomon restored it to Zadok of Eleazar's line. Chronicles itself says none of that: it says Bukki caused Uzzi to be born, and moves on.

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 verb, twice, and nothing else

The verse has eight words and two of them are the same verb. הוֹלִ֣יד (hō·w·lîḏ, H3205) is a Hifil, a causative: he caused to be born. K&D fixes on exactly this repetition, noting that in 1 Chronicles 6:4-15 the descendants of Eleazar are enumerated in twenty-two generations with this word "repeated with every name," and drawing from the older commentators the inference that the register exists to communicate the succession of high priests from Eleazar down to Jehozadak, carried to Babylon. Barnes says the same thing in eight words: "The genealogy of the high priestly stem to the captivity." So the sentence that looks like the thinnest in the chapter is actually load-bearing. It is not telling you about Bukki. It is telling you that the office survived Bukki. ⚙ Our observation, not theirs: the only grammatically active element in the verse is the fathering, and its subject is always the older man. Nobody in this verse achieves anything. They hand something on.

ii. The gap the commentators cannot close at Uzzi

The last word of the verse is where the tradition breaks into argument. Benson, Poole and JFB all record, in nearly the same sentence, that in Uzzi's days the high priesthood was transferred from Eleazar's family to Ithamar's, and all three say plainly that the cause is unknown. Gill gives the pedigree of the claim, citing Josephus (Antiquities 5.11.5) and the Jewish chronicle Juchasin for the report that in the times of Uzzi "the priesthood was translated into the family of Ithamar, of which Eli was the first high priest"; it stayed there, Gill adds, until Solomon restored it to Zadok of Eleazar's line. The Pulpit Commentary declines to settle there, reporting that Lightfoot placed the change after Meraioth instead, and then offering a quieter possibility: that the gap between Abishua and Eli was simply filled by high priests "unknown by name to us." ⚙ Note what none of them claim. Not one of them says Chronicles records the transfer. The text is silent; the silence is filled from Josephus and from inference. K&D, working the numbers, reaches the same shape of problem from the other side, finding twenty-two generations a tight fit for the years available and allowing that הוליד may cover a grandson. The honest summary is that this list is a real succession with acknowledged seams in it.

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

⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested. Read the verse as it stands and it refuses to be interesting. Abishua caused Bukki to be born. Bukki caused Uzzi to be born. No deed, no sin, no word from the LORD, no length of days. If you wanted to know what kind of men they were, Scripture has declined to tell you, and the commentators' scramble at Uzzi is evidence of how much we would like it to have told us. What the verse does record is that the line held. The priesthood of Israel was not sustained in any generation by the quality of the man holding it, because the text will not even tell us the quality of the man holding it; it was sustained by the fact that God kept giving sons. That is a mercy and a verdict at once. A mercy, because the altar stayed staffed through centuries the Chronicler does not narrate. A verdict, because a priesthood that must be handed on is a priesthood whose holders keep dying, and Hebrews 7 makes precisely that observation the reason a better priest was needed. Henry, reading the whole chapter, lands where the ⚙ reading lands: the descent mattered absolutely for these men's office, and matters not at all for ours, since "none but our great High Priest can make atonement for sin." The single line set apart beside this reading is ⚙ ours, not Scripture.

A list of births is a list of deaths read forward.

⚙

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 two names, recited again for the singers' sake verbal / quotation: confirmed

1 Chronicles 6:51 repeats Bukki and Uzzi inside the second run through the Aaronic line later in this same chapter. The Verifier records the shared lexemes H1231 Buqqîy (found in only four verses of the canon) and H5813 ʻUzzîy (eleven verses). Because H1231 is that rare, the link is lexically secure rather than merely thematic: the Chronicler is reusing the same material twice within one chapter, which is itself a datum about how he composes.

1 Chronicles 6:51

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1231 Buqqîy (rare, in 4 vv) and H5813 ʻUzzîy (in 11 vv). The rarity of H1231 carries the verbal tier; this is repetition of the same list within one book, not a quotation of one book by another.

Ezra runs the same names backward to prove his right to the altar verbal / quotation: confirmed

Ezra 7:4 carries Uzzi and Bukki, and Ezra 7:5 carries Abishua, as Ezra traces his own descent up to Aaron. The Verifier gives the shared bases directly: H1231 Buqqîy (in 4 vv) with H5813 ʻUzzîy at 7:4, and H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv) at 7:5. The Pulpit Commentary independently notes that these five succeeding names "reappear in the list of Ezra 7," while conceding little else is known of them. Same men, opposite direction: Chronicles descends from Aaron to the exile, Ezra climbs from a post-exilic scribe back to Aaron, and this verse is one of the rungs both use.

Ezra 7:4 · Ezra 7:5

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H1231 Buqqîy (rare, in 4 vv) and H5813 ʻUzzîy (in 11 vv) at Ezra 7:4; H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv) at Ezra 7:5. Rare-lexeme overlap across two books listing the same succession.

A second Bukki who is not this Bukki flagged: verify source

The Verifier surfaces Numbers 34:22, where a Bukki stands in the wilderness list of tribal princes for Dan, not in the line of Eleazar. The shared lexeme H1231 is real and rare. The identification is not: Strong's own entry glosses Buqqîy as "Bukki, the name of two Israelites," and a Danite chief in the wilderness is not the Aaronic priest of this genealogy. ⚙ We list the link because the machine found it and because it is the clearest warning in this unit about what lexical matching can and cannot prove, not because we think the two men are one.

Numbers 34:22

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H1231 Buqqîy (in 4 vv). The lexical basis is genuine but the referent is almost certainly a different person (Strong's: "the name of two Israelites"; Numbers 34:22 is a prince of Dan, this verse is the line of Eleazar). Flagged so the match is not read as a connection between the men.

Abishua, the link behind and the link ahead structural / thematic: confirmed

Abishua ties this verse backward to 1 Chronicles 6:4, where Phinehas begets him, and forward to 1 Chronicles 6:50, the parallel recital. The Verifier's basis in each case is H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv). K&D anchors why the earlier link matters: Phinehas son of Eleazar is found in possession of the high priesthood at Judges 20:28, so the chain running through Abishua is not a bare family tree but the documented transmission of an office. The fifth occurrence, 1 Chronicles 8:4, is a Benjamite Abishua and does not belong to this line.

1 Chronicles 6:4 · 1 Chronicles 6:50 · Judges 20:28

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H50 ʼĂbîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv) with 1 Chronicles 6:4 and 6:50. Judges 20:28 is added on K&D's stated ground (Phinehas holding the office), not on a shared lexeme, so the badge stays structural.

The priest without a genealogy structural / thematic: confirmed

Hebrews 7 argues its case out of the very machinery this verse runs on: a priesthood that descends by birth, whose holders are many because death keeps interrupting them, set against a priest introduced without recorded father, mother or descent. ⚙ Our claim is structural, and it has to be. This is a Greek text against a Hebrew one, so no shared Strong's lexeme exists or could exist, and we do not assert that Hebrews cites 1 Chronicles 6:5. What we assert is that the argument of Hebrews 7 is unintelligible without lists exactly like this one, and that Henry reads the chapter in the same direction when he says that the honours of the Levitical office "depended upon their descent" while none but our great High Priest can make atonement.

Hebrews 7:3 · Hebrews 7:23

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition and no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is the shared institution and pattern: hereditary priestly succession by begetting, which Hebrews 7 names as the thing being superseded. No quotation is claimed.

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The office that had to be handed on ancient/widely-held

⚙ Read the verb rather than the names. הוֹלִ֣יד is a causative perfect: each man caused the next to be born, and then, necessarily, stopped. K&D states the mechanism without any theological freight, observing that the son so begotten was heir of the high priestly dignity when he outlived his father. Hebrews 7 takes that same mechanism and turns it into an argument: the Levitical priests were many precisely because death prevented them from continuing, whereas one priest holds his office permanently. The genealogy is therefore not an obstacle to the gospel but its premise. Henry, commenting on this chapter, draws the conclusion in as many words: the priests' honours "depended upon their descent," and yet "none but our great High Priest can make atonement for sin, nor can any be accepted but through his atonement." This is the standard reading of Hebrews applied to the Chronicler's list, not a novelty of ours.

Hebrews 7:23 · Hebrews 7:24 · Hebrews 9:12

God keeps a line He does not narrate ancient/widely-held

⚙ Nothing is recorded of Abishua, Bukki or Uzzi except that a son came. Barnes calls the whole stretch "The genealogy of the high priestly stem to the captivity," and that is the entire content: the stem held. The preservation is God's, not the men's, since the text credits the men with nothing at all. The same pattern runs to its end in the genealogies that open the Gospels, where long files of unnarrated names exist for the sake of the one at the bottom. ⚙ Our reading: the mercy shown to Israel in this verse is that worship was never once left without a priest, and the mercy shown at the end of the line is that it was never again left needing one.

Matthew 1:1 · Luke 3:23 · Galatians 4:4

A succession with seams in it novel

⚙ Offered as our own reading, and marked novel. The commentators' difficulty at Uzzi is unusually instructive. Benson and Poole both report that the high priesthood left Eleazar's house here "for some cause now unknown," and JFB says the same with "for unrecorded reasons"; Gill sources the claim to Josephus and Juchasin and notes it stayed with Ithamar's house, beginning with Eli, until Solomon restored it to Zadok; Lightfoot, cited by the Pulpit Commentary, puts the change elsewhere; the Pulpit editors suspect missing names. ⚙ What the tradition is circling is that even this carefully kept succession was interrupted, contested and partly lost, and that the reason is not preserved. A priesthood that can be transferred away from a family for reasons nobody can recover is, by that fact, provisional. We mark this novel because none of the sources above draws the christological conclusion from the gap itself, and a reader may fairly judge that we are making more of the commentators' embarrassment than it will bear.

1 Samuel 2:35 · 1 Kings 2:35

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:

  • Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871)
  • 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 numbers; eight Hebrew words, of which two are the untranslatable object marker אֶת־ and two are the identical verb form. Nothing in the Hebrew of this verse is textually disputed in our sources.

Sources, honestly labelled. The Geneva entry supplied for this verse is only the lemma line with a section heading and carries no actual gloss, so Geneva is quoted nowhere in this unit. The Gill entry attached here in fact opens at 1 Chronicles 6:1 and runs over the whole chapter; his remarks on Uzzi are drawn from that block, and we cite them as his comment on the chapter rather than on this verse alone. The K&D entry is capped in the brief (roughly sixteen thousand further characters were not available to us), so our use of him is limited to the opening portion; his versification there follows the Hebrew numbering (1 Chronicles 5:30-41), which is the same material as 6:4-15 in English Bibles.

What is uncertain. The transfer of the high priesthood from Eleazar's line to Ithamar's in Uzzi's days is not stated by Chronicles. It reaches Benson, Poole, JFB and Gill from Josephus and later Jewish tradition, every one of them says the cause is unknown, and Lightfoot placed the change at a different point in the list. K&D separately judges twenty-two generations a strained fit for the roughly 863 years he calculates, and allows that הוליד may skip a generation. We have therefore reported the tradition as tradition and have not let it into the verse.

⚙ Everything marked with the gear, including the reading of the causative verb as the theological centre of the verse, the Hebrews 7 thread and all three Christ entries, is machine synthesis and fallible. The Numbers 34:22 link is deliberately flagged: the lexeme match is real, the identification of the two men is not ours to make.

✦ = 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)