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1 Chronicles6:9

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1 Chronicles 6:9 — . 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.

9

Ahimaaz was the father of Azariah, Azariah was the father of Johanan,

Berean Standard Bible · CC0

Hebrew — tap a word ↓

wa·’ă·ḥî·ma·‘aṣ hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- ‘ă·zar·yāh wa·‘ă·zar·yāh hō·w·lîḏ ’eṯ- yō·w·ḥā·nān

Word by word8 · parsed
וַאֲחִימַ֙עַץ֙wa·’ă·ḥî·ma·‘aṣAhimaazH290
√ ʼĂchîymaʻats — Achimaats, the name of three IsraelitesConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
ʼĂchîymaʻats: Achimaats, the name of three Israelites H290 is genuinely uncommon, standing in only fifteen verses of the canon, and most of them are the David narratives. The Pulpit Commentary fixes the first notice of him at 2 Samuel 15:36 and the last at 2 Samuel 19:29, and warns against confusing him with Solomon's officer in Naphtali. The priestly register thus reaches back and quietly absorbs the young runner who carried news across a battlefield into a list whose only interest is who held the office next.
הוֹלִ֣ידhō·w·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
yâlad: to bear young (Hifil perfect) The causative stem of a verb whose plain sense is giving birth. Keil and Delitzsch press the point that in genealogical lists this hôlîd may express mediate procreation, so that a grandson can be introduced as begotten by a grandfather; that elasticity is what lets twenty-two names span the centuries between Aaron's death and the exile. The word therefore carries both the register's authority and its acknowledged gaps.
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
The direct object marker, untranslatable; it marks Azariah as definite, not any Azariah.
עֲזַרְיָ֔ה‘ă·zar·yāhAzariahH5838
√ ʻĂzaryâh — Azarjah, the name of nineteen IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
ʻĂzaryâh: Azarjah, the name of nineteen Israelites The commonness recorded in the lexicon is the whole problem. Barnes argues that this Azariah, not the son of Johanan in the next verse, was high priest at the dedication of Solomon's temple, since Zadok cannot have been succeeded by a great-great-grandson; Cambridge reaches the same verdict and cites 1 Kings 4:2. That the received text attaches the temple notice to the wrong man is their inference from chronology, not a variant reading: no manuscript evidence for the move is recorded in the brief.
וַעֲזַרְיָ֖הwa·‘ă·zar·yāhAzariahH5838
√ ʻĂzaryâh — Azarjah, the name of nineteen IsraelitesConjunctive wawNounpropermasculine singular
The conjunctive waw makes the son of the first clause the father of the second. Nothing is said of Azariah's life; his whole recorded function here is to hand the office on.
הוֹלִ֥ידhō·w·lîḏwas the father ofH3205
√ yâlad — to bear youngVerbHifilPerfectthird person masculine singular
The same Hifil repeated without variation. Keil and Delitzsch note that the word is repeated with every name in the list, and that monotony is deliberate: the register is not narrating lives, only certifying an unbroken transmission.
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
The object marker again, pinning Johanan as the definite heir.
יוֹחָנָֽן׃yō·w·ḥā·nānJohananH3110
√ Yôwchânân — Jochanan, the name of nine IsraelitesNounpropermasculine singular
Yôwchânân: Jochanan, the name of nine Israelites H3110 stands in twenty-two verses and, like Azariah, is borne by many men. Gill records the alternative that this Johanan, the father of Azariah, is the Jehoiada who in Athaliah's day preserved both church and state (2 Kings 11:4). The brief does not settle it, and neither should we: the name is certain, the man behind it is not.

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 names, one verb, twice — 1 Chronicles 6:9

The verse has no narrative at all: הוֹלִ֣יד (hō·w·lîḏ, H3205, Hifil) twice, each time governing אֶת־ and a proper name. Keil and Delitzsch observe that this begetting-word is repeated with every name through the whole list, and draw from that repetition the inference that the register exists to communicate the succession of high priests from Eleazar down to Jehozadak. Matthew Henry gives the reason such a list mattered to the men in it: priests and Levites, he writes in his note on the chapter, were more concerned than any other Israelites to preserve their descent clear and to be able to prove it, because all the honours and privileges of their office depended on it. The flatness is the point. A man's whole entry is that he received the office and passed it on.

ii. The seam the editors did not hide — 1 Chronicles 6:9

Three independent commentators in the brief converge on one judgment about this verse. Barnes holds that it must apparently be this Azariah, and not the son of Johanan in verse 10, who was high priest at the dedication of Solomon's temple, since Zadok, who lived into Solomon's reign, cannot have been succeeded by a great-great-grandson. Cambridge agrees that this Azariah rather than the Azariah of verse 10 would have been contemporary with Solomon, and that the parenthetical notice about serving in the house Solomon built may really belong here; it cites 1 Kings 4:2. The Pulpit Commentary says the same and adds a further caution, that this Azariah must not be identified with the Azariah of King Uzziah's day, who was nearly a century later. Gill, working from Josephus and the Juchasin, preserves the rival tradition that in Uzzi's time the priesthood passed to Ithamar's family, where it stayed until Solomon restored it to Zadok. None of these men is guessing wildly; each is trying to make an admittedly compressed list line up with the narrative books.

iii. Ahimaaz, who once ran — 1 Chronicles 6:9

H290 is rare enough that the Verifier finds it in only fifteen verses, and the Pulpit Commentary walks the reader to them: the first important notice of Ahimaaz is 2 Samuel 15:36 and the last is 2 Samuel 19:29. Between those two verses stands a young man desperate to carry news to David and unwilling to be the one who tells him his son is dead. Chronicles records none of that. It records that he begot Azariah. The register's silence is not ignorance; it is a decision about what a priest is for.

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

⚙ Fallible reading, offered to be tested. A genealogy is the least devotional kind of text there is, and that is precisely its testimony. The verse asserts, twice, that a man caused a son to be born and that the son is named. No virtue is praised, no failure is charged, no word from the Lord is quoted. What the two clauses carry is continuity: that the service of God did not depend on any one man surviving, and that when a priest died the altar was not left unattended. Keil and Delitzsch reckon roughly thirty-nine years to each of the twenty-two generations and admit the figure strains, which is an honest way of saying that the list is a summary rather than a register of every individual. That admission does not weaken it. The chain is reported, not proved, and it ends where Gill points: at Jehozadak, carried young into Babylon, with the chain apparently broken. If the covenant rested on the succession of these names, the exile ended it. Chronicles was written for readers who knew the exile had happened, and it copied the names out anyway.

Not a verse, a fallible editorial line: the list keeps its own record of every priest who died still holding the office.

⚙

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.

Ahimaaz the runner, filed as a father structural / thematic: confirmed

The name וַאֲחִימַ֙עַץ֙ (ʼĂchîymaʻats, H290) ties this priestly entry to the Absalom narrative, where Ahimaaz carries intelligence to David and later outruns the Cushite to the king. The Verifier records the shared lexeme across all of these verses, and the Pulpit Commentary independently walks the same route, naming 2 Samuel 15:36 and 2 Samuel 19:29 as the first and last important notices of him. The link is real but it is a link of identity, not of quotation: Samuel and Chronicles are not citing each other, they are naming the same man for opposite purposes.

1 Chronicles 6:8 · 1 Chronicles 6:53 · 2 Samuel 15:27 · 2 Samuel 15:36 · 2 Samuel 18:19 · 2 Samuel 18:27

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H290 ʼĂchîymaʻats (in 15 vv), a rare lexeme, but the sharing is a recurring proper name rather than a quoted phrase, so the tier is held at structural rather than verbal

The notice that may sit on the wrong Azariah structural / thematic: confirmed

The next verse carries the parenthesis about the man who executed the priest's office in the house Solomon built in Jerusalem. Barnes says the notice attached there to the second Azariah must, beyond a doubt, belong properly to the first, and Cambridge reaches the same conclusion, adding 1 Kings 4:2 as the comparison. The Verifier confirms that verse 10 shares both names with verse 9, ʻĂzaryâh (H5838) and Yôwchânân (H3110), which is exactly why the two entries are so easily confused. This is a textual-transmission thread, not a doctrinal one, and we record it as the commentators record it: a probable displacement, not a certainty.

1 Chronicles 6:10

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3110 Yôwchânân (in 22 vv) and H5838 ʻĂzaryâh (in 44 vv); the connection asserted is a repeated name-pair inside one list, and the displacement of the temple notice is the commentators' inference, not a textual variant

Johanan and Azariah at Jeremiah 43:2, a lexical coincidence flagged: verify source

The Verifier surfaces Jeremiah 43:2 as sharing both H3110 and H5838 with this verse. Honesty requires saying what that is worth. In Jeremiah the two names belong to Johanan son of Kareah and Azariah son of Hoshaiah, men of the remnant who accused Jeremiah of lying and carried the people down to Egypt. They are not the priests of this register. The shared lexemes are genuine and the frequencies are not high, but the link is between homonyms, and any reading that treats it as a deliberate echo would be building on the concordance rather than on the text.

Jeremiah 43:2

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H3110 Yôwchânân (in 22 vv) and H5838 ʻĂzaryâh (in 44 vv), but both are common personal names borne by different men in the two passages; the computed basis is sound while the interpretive link is weak, so it is flagged rather than tiered

A list of priests who kept dying structural / thematic: confirmed

⚙ Structural only. Hebrews argues that the former priests were many in number because death prevented them from continuing, and contrasts that with a priesthood held permanently by one who lives forever. This verse is a specimen of exactly the phenomenon Hebrews describes: two transfers of office in a single line, each requiring the previous holder to be gone. No shared vocabulary can be claimed here, since a Greek epistle and a Hebrew register cannot share Strong's numbers; the link is a pattern the New Testament writer names and this list embodies.

1 Chronicles 6:9 · Hebrews 7:23

basis: Cross-Testament, Greek to Hebrew: no shared Strong's lexeme is possible and none is claimed. The recorded basis is a shared structural pattern, succession of the priestly office by the death of its holder, which Hebrews 7:23 states as a premise and this genealogy instantiates twice

⚙Christ in the Unittypology · verify

AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.

The office that death kept handing on ancient/widely-held

⚙ Keil and Delitzsch read the whole list as the succession of high priests from Eleazar to Jehozadak, and the mechanism of that succession is stated in our verse in its barest form: the man begot, and the son took the office. Twenty-two times over, the reason there is a next name is that the previous priest died. The writer to the Hebrews takes this same fact about the Levitical order and makes it his argument, that the former priests were many because death prevented them from continuing, whereas the one who abides forever holds his priesthood without transfer and is able to save completely those who draw near through him. Matthew Henry, commenting on this very chapter, moves to the same conclusion: believers and ministers may be very useful to the church, but none except our great High Priest can make atonement for sin. This is the standard apostolic reading, and Chronicles supplies the raw material for it without knowing that it does.

Hebrews 7:23-25 · Hebrews 9:11-12

The chain that runs into exile and is handed back ancient/widely-held

⚙ Gill follows this line to its end: it runs to Jehozadak, the same man as Josedech of Haggai 1:1, who went young into Babylon, and whose son Joshua, born in the captivity, came out of it when Cyrus made his proclamation. So the genealogy that verse 9 advances by one link does not end in an unbroken temple service; it ends in deportation, and then in a priest standing in a restored land. Zechariah sets that same Joshua son of Jehozadak before the angel in filthy garments, has him re-clothed, and calls him and his companions men of sign, pointing to the servant named the Branch. The Christian reading has for centuries taken that scene as the hinge: the priesthood which this verse hands from father to son survives the exile only as a sign of one who does not need to be succeeded. We mark the connection as figural and widely held, not as anything Chronicles states.

Haggai 1:1 · Zechariah 3:8 · Ezra 2:2

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:

  • Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible (1834)
  • John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible (1746–63)
  • Keil & Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1860s)
  • The Pulpit Commentary, Spence & Exell, eds. (1880s)

Text: BSB for the English, Berean interlinear with Strong's for the eight Hebrew words; the parse data (Hifil perfect third person masculine singular for both occurrences of hôlîd) is taken from the brief and not adjusted. The lexicon supplies only bare identifications for the three names (H290 the name of three Israelites, H5838 of nineteen, H3110 of nine), so no etymology of Ahimaaz, Azariah or Johanan is offered here; none was sourced, and we have invented none.

What is uncertain: the identity of this Azariah. Barnes, Cambridge and the Pulpit Commentary all argue that the temple notice printed at verse 10 belongs at verse 9, which is an editorial judgment about the received text rather than a manuscript variant, and the brief records no variant. Gill's account of the priesthood passing to Ithamar's house in Uzzi's day rests on Josephus and the Juchasin, not on Chronicles. Keil and Delitzsch concede that twenty-two generations look too few for the interval they compute and that hôlîd may cover a grandfather begetting a grandson, which is to say the list is admittedly selective. The Geneva note on this verse in the brief contains only the verse text and a heading, so no Geneva voice is cited; Poole has no note here; the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown entry filed at this verse actually comments on verse 5, and is likewise not cited. The Keil and Delitzsch entry is capped in the brief and the excerpt used here comes from the portion supplied.

✦ = 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)