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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 24:6 - 24:6
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“He set them down,” viz., the classes, as the lot had determined them. מִן־הַלֵּוִי, of the tribe of Levi. ול לַכֹּהֲנִים belongs to הָאָבֹות רָאשֵׁי, heads of the fathers'-houses of the priests and of the Levites. The second hemistich of 1Ch 24:6 gives a more detailed account of the drawing of the lots: “One father's-house was drawn for Eleazar, and drawn for Ithamar.” The last words are obscure. אָחוּז, to lay hold of, to draw forth (Num 31:30, Num 31:47), here used of drawing lots, signifies plucked forth or drawn from the urn. The father's-house was plucked forth from the urn, the lot bearing its name being drawn. זָאֻז וְאָהֻז, which is the only well-attested reading, only some few MSS containing the reading אָהֻז וְאֶחָד, is very difficult. Although this various reading is a mere conjecture, yet Gesen. (Thes. p. 68), with Cappell and Grotius, prefers it. The repetition of the same word expresses sometimes totality, multitude, sometimes a distributive division; and here can only be taken in this last signification: one father's-house drawn for Eleazar, and then always drawn (or always one drawn) for Ithamar. So much at least is clear, that the lots of the two priestly families were not placed in one urn, but were kept apart in different urns, so that the lots might be drawn alternately for Eleazar and Ithamar. Had the lot for Eleazar been first drawn, and thereafter that for Ithamar, since Eleazar's family was the more numerous, they would have had an advantage over the Ithamarites. But it was not to be allowed that one family should have an advantage over the other, and the lots were consequently drawn alternately, one for the one, and another for the other. But as the Eleazarites were divided into sixteen fathers'-houses, and the Ithamarites into eight, Bertheau thinks that it was settled, in order to bring about an equality in the numbers sixteen and eight, in so far as the drawing of the lots was concerned, that each house of Ithamar should represent two lots, or, which is the same thing, that after every two houses of Eleazarites one house of Ithamarites should follow, and that the order of succession of the single houses was fixed according to this arrangement. To this or some similar conception of the manner of settling the order of succession we are brought, he says, by the relation of the number eight to sixteen, and by the words אָהֻז and אָהֻז וְאָהֻז. But even though this conception be readily suggested by the relation of the number sixteen to eight, yet we cannot see how the words אָהֻז and אָהֻז וְאָהֻז indicate it. These words would much rather suggest that a lot for Eleazar alternated with the drawing of one for Ithamar, until the eight heads of Ithamar's family had been drawn, when, of course, the remaining eight lots of Eleazar must be drawn one after the other. We cannot, however, come to any certain judgment on the matter, for the words are so obscure as to be unintelligible even to the old translators. In 1Ch 24:7-18 we have the names of the fathers'-houses in the order of succession which had been determined by the lot. יֵצֵא, of the lot coming forth from the urn, as in Jos 16:1; Jos 19:1. The names Jehoiarib and Jedaiah occur together also in 1Ch 9:10; and Jedaiah is met with, besides, in Ezr 2:36 and Neh 7:39. The priest Mattathias, 1 Macc. 2:1, came of the class of Jehoiarib. Of the succeeding names, שְׂעֹרִים (1Ch 24:8), יֶשֶׁבְאָב (1Ch 24:13), and הַפִּצֵּץ (1Ch 24:15) do not elsewhere occur; others, such as חֻפָּה (1Ch 24:13), גָּמוּל (1Ch 24:17), do not recur among the names of priests. The sixteenth class, Immer, on the contrary, and the twenty-first, Jachin, are often mentioned; cf. 1Ch 9:10, 1Ch 9:12. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, belonged to the eighth, Abiah (Luk 1:5).