Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 1:35 - 1:35

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 1:35 - 1:35


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The posterity of Esau and Seir. - An extract from Gen 36:1-30. 1Ch 1:35. The five sons of Esau are the same who, according to Gen 36:4., were born to him of his three wives in the land of Canaan. יְעוּשׁ is another form of יְעִישׁ, Gen 36:5 (Kethibh).

1Ch 1:36-37

The grandchildren of Esau. In 1Ch 1:36 there are first enumerated five sons of his son Eliphaz, as in Gen 36:11, for צְפִי is only another form of צְפֹו (Gen.). Next to these five names are ranged in addition וַעֲמָלֵק וְתִמְנַע, “Timna and Amalek,” while we learn from Gen 36:12 that Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, who bore to him Amalek. The addition of the two names Timna and Amalek in the Chronicle thus appears to be merely an abbreviation, which the author might well allow himself, as the posterity of Esau were known to his readers from Genesis. The name Timna, too, by its form (a feminine formation), must have guarded against the idea of some modern exegetes that Timna was also a son of Eliphaz. Thus, then, Esau had through Eliphaz six grandchildren, who in Gen 36:12 are all set down as sons of Adah, the wife of Esau and the mother of Eliphaz. (Vide com. to Gen 36:12, where the change of Timna into a son of Eliphaz is rejected as a misinterpretation.)

1Ch 1:37

To Reuel, the son of Esau by Bashemath, four sons were born, whose names correspond to those in Gen 36:13. These ten (6 + 4) grandsons of Esau were, with his three sons by Aholibamah (Jeush, Jaalam, and Korah, Gen 36:35), the founders of the thirteen tribes of the posterity of Esau. They are called in Gen 36:15 עֵשָׂו בְּנֵי אַלּוּפֵי, heads of tribes (φύλαρχοι) of the children of Esau, i.e., of the Edomites, but are all again enumerated, Gen. 3615-19, singly.

(Note: The erroneous statement of Bertheau, therefore, that “according to Genesis the Edomite people was also divided into twelve tribes, five tribes from Eliphaz, four tribes from Reuel, and the three tribes which were referred immediately to Aholibamah the wife of Esau. It is distinctly stated that Amalek was connected with these twelve tribes only very loosely, for he appears as the son of the concubine of Eliphaz,” - must be in so far corrected, that neither the Chronicle nor Genesis knows anything of the twelve tribes of the Edomites. Both books, on the contrary, mention thirteen grandsons of Esau, and these thirteen grandsons are, according to the account of Genesis, the thirteen phylarchs of the Edomite people, who are distributed according to the three wives of Esau; so that the thirteen families may be grouped together in three tribes. Nor is Amalek connected only in a loose way with the other tribes in Genesis: he is, on the contrary, not only included in the number of the sons of Adah in Gen 36:12, probably because Timna stood in the same relationship to Adah the wife of Esau as Hagar held to Sarah, but also is reckoned in Gen 36:16 among the Allufim of the sons of Eliphaz. Genesis therefore enumerates not five but six tribes from Eliphaz; and the chronicler has not “completely obliterated the twelvefold division,” as Bertheau further maintains, but the thirteen sons and grandsons of Esau who became phylarchs are all introduced; and the only thing which is omitted in reference to them is the title עֵשָׂו בְּנֵי אַלּוּפֵי, it being unnecessary in a genealogical enumeration of the descendants of Esau.)

1Ch 1:38-42

When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people. For this reason, in Gen 36:20-30 the tribal princes of the Seirite inhabitants of the land are noticed; and in our chapter also, 1Ch 1:38, the names of these seven שֵׂעִיר בְּנֵי, and in 1Ch 1:39-42 of their sons (eighteen men and one woman, Timna), are enumerated, where only Aholibamah the daughter of Anah, also mentioned in Gen 36:25, is omitted. The names correspond, except in a few unimportant points, which have been already discussed in the Commentary on Genesis. The inhabitants of Mount Seir consisted, then, after the immigration of Esau and his descendants, of twenty tribes under a like number of phylarchs, thirteen of whom were Edomite, of the family of Esau, and seven Seirite, who are called in the Chronicle שֵׂעִיר בְּנֵי, and in Genesis חֹרִי, Troglodytes, inhabitants of the land, that is, aborigines.

If we glance over the whole posterity of Abraham as they are enumerated in 1Ch 1:28-42, we see that it embraces (a) his sons Ishmael and Isaac, and Isaac's sons Israel and Esau (together 4 persons); (b) the sons of Ishmael, or the tribes descended from Ishmael (12 names); (c) the sons and grandsons of Keturah (13 persons or chiefs); (d) the thirteen phylarchs descended from Esau; (e) the seven Seirite phylarchs, and eighteen grandsons and a granddaughter of Seir (26 persons). We have thus in all the names of sixty-eight persons, and to them we must add Keturah, and Timna the concubine of Eliphaz, before we get seventy persons. But these seventy must not by any means be reckoned as seventy tribes, which is the result Bertheau arrives at by means of strange calculations and errors in numbers.

(Note: That the Chronicle gives no countenance to this view appears from Bertheau's calculation of the 70 tribes: from Ishmael, 12; from Keturah, 13; from Isaac, 2; from Esau, 5 sons and 7 grandchildren of Eliphaz (Timna, 1Ch 1:36, being included in the number), and 4 grandsons by Reuel - 16 in all; from Seir 7 sons, and from these 20 other descendants, 27 in all, which makes the sum of 70. But the biblical text mentions only 19 other descendants of Seir, so that only 26 persons came from Seir, and the sum is therefore 12 + 13 + 2 + 16 + 26 = 69. But we must also object to other points in Bertheau's reckoning: (1) the arbitrary change of Timna into a grandchild of Esau; (2) the arbitrary reckoning of Esau and Israel (= Jacob) without Ishmael. Was Esau, apart from his sons, the originator of a people? Had the author of the Chronicle cherished the purpose attributed to him by Bertheau, of bringing the lists of names handed down by tradition to the round or significant number 70, he would certainly in 1Ch 1:33 not have omitted the three peoples descended from Dedan (Gen 25:3), as he might by these names have completed the number 70 without further trouble.)

Upon this conclusion he founds his hypothesis, that as the three branches of the family of Noah are divided into seventy peoples (which, as we have seen before is not the case), so also the three branches of the family of Abraham are divided into seventy tribes; and in this again he finds a remarkable indication “that even in the time of the chronicler, men sought by means of numbers to bring order and consistency into the lists of names handed down by tradition from the ancient times.”