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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 3:17 - 3:17
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The descendants of the captive and exiled Jeconiah, and other families. - 1Ch 3:17. In the list of the son of Jeconiah it is doubtful if אַסִּר be the name of a son, or should be considered, as it is by Luther and others, an appellative, “prisoner,” in apposition to יְכָנְיָה, “the sons of Jeconiah, the captive, is Shealtiel” (A. V. Salathiel). The reasons which have been advanced in favour of this latter interpretation are: the lack of the conjunction with שְׁאַלְתִּיאֵל; the position of בְּנֹו after שׁאלת, not after אַסִּר; and the circumstance that Assir is nowhere to be met with, either in Mat 1:12 or in Seder olam zuta, as an intervening member of the family between Jeconiah and Shealtiel (Berth.). But none of these reasons is decisive. The want of the conjunction proves absolutely nothing, for in 1Ch 3:18 also, the last three names are grouped together without a conjunction; and the position of בְּנֹו after שׁאלת is just as strange, whether Shealtiel be the first named son or the second, for in 1Ch 3:18 other sons of Jeconiah follow, and the peculiarity of it can only be accounted for on the supposition that the case of Shealtiel differs from that of the remaining sons. The omission of Assir in the genealogies in Matthew and the Seder olam also proves nothing, for in the genealogies intermediate members are often passed over. Against the appellative interpretation of the word, on the contrary, the want of the article is decisive; as apposition to יְכָנִיָה, it should have the article. But besides this, according to the genealogy of Jesus in Luk 3:27, Shealtiel is a son of Neri, a descendant of David, of the lineage of Nathan, not of Solomon; and according to Hag 1:1, Hag 1:12; Ezr 3:2; Ezr 5:2, and Mat 1:12, Zerubbabel is son of Shealtiel; while, according to 1Ch 3:18 and 1Ch 3:19 of our chapter, he is a son of Pedaiah, a brother of Shealtiel. These divergent statements may be reconciled by the following combination. The discrepancy in regard to the enumeration of Shealtiel among the sons of Jeconiah, a descendant of Solomon, and the statement that he was descended from Neri, a descendant of Nathan, Solomon's brother, is removed by the supposition that Jeconiah, besides the Zedekiah mentioned in 1Ch 3:16, who died childless, had another son, viz., Assir, who left only a daughter, who then, according to the law as to heiresses (Num 27:8; Num 36:8.), married a man belonging to a family of her paternal tribe, viz., Neri, of the family of David, in the line of Nathan, and that from this marriage sprang Shealtiel, Malchiram, and the other sons (properly grandsons) of Jeconiah mentioned in 1Ch 3:18. If we suppose the eldest of these, Shealtiel, to come into the inheritance of his maternal grandfather, he would be legally regarded as his legitimate son. In our genealogy, therefore, along with the childless Assir, Shealtiel is introduced as a descendant of Jeconiah, while in Luke he is called, according to his actual descent, a son of Neri. The other discrepancy in respect to the descendants of Zerubbabel is to be explained, as has been already shown on Hag 1:1, by the law of Levirate marriage, and by the supposition that Shealtiel died without any male descendants, leaving his wife a widow. In such a case, according to the law (Deu 25:5-10, cf. Mat 22:24-28), it became the duty of one of the brothers of the deceased to marry his brother's widow, that he might raise up seed, i.e., posterity, to the deceased brother; and the first son born of this marriage would be legally incorporated with the family of the deceased, and registered as his son. After Shealtiel's death, his second brother Pedaiah fulfilled this Levirate duty, and begat, in his marriage with his sister-in-law, Zerubbabel, who was now regarded, in all that related to laws of heritage, as Shealtiel's son, and propagated his race as his heir. According to this right of heritage, Zerubbabel is called in the passages quoted from Haggai and Ezra, as also in the genealogy in Matthew, the son of Shealtiel. The בְּנֹו seems to hint at this peculiar position of Shealtiel with reference to the proper descendants of Jeconiah, helping to remind us that he was son of Jeconiah not by natural birth, but only because of his right of heritage only, on his mother's side. As to the orthography of the name שׁאלתיאל, see on Hag 1:1. The six persons named in 1Ch 3:18 are not sons of Shealtiel, as Kimchi, Hiller, and others, and latterly Hitzig also, on Hag 1:1, believe, but his brothers, as the cop. ו before מַלְפִּירָם requires. The supposition just mentioned is only an attempt, irreconcilable with the words of the text, to form a series, thus: Shealtiel, Pedaiah his son, Zerubbabel his son, - so as to get rid of the differences between our verse and Hag 1:1; Ezr 3:2. In 1Ch 3:19 and 1Ch 3:20, sons and grandsons of Pedaiah are registered. Nothing further is known of the Bne Jeconiah mentioned in 1Ch 3:18. Pedaiah's son Zerubbabel is unquestionably the prince of Judah who returned to Jerusalem in the reign of Cyrus in the year 536, at the head of a great host of exiles, and superintended their settlement anew in the land of their fathers (Ezra 1-6). Of Shimei nothing further is known. In 1Ch 3:19 and 1Ch 3:20, the sons of Zerubbabel are mentioned, and in 1Ch 3:21 two grandsons are named. Instead of the singular וּבֶן some MSS have וּבְנֵי, and the old versions also have the plural. This is correct according to the sense, although וּבֶן cannot be objected to on critical grounds, and may be explained by the writer's having had mainly in view the one son who continued the line of descendants. By the mention of their sister after the first two names, the sons of Zerubbabel are divided into two groups, probably as the descendants of different mothers. How Shelomith had gained such fame as to be received into the family register, we do not know. Those mentioned in 1Ch 3:20 are brought together in one group by the number “five.” חֶסֶד יוּשַׁב, “grace is restored,” is one name. The grandsons of Zerubbabel, Pelatiah and Jesaiah, were without doubt contemporaries of Ezra, who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon seventy-eight years after Zerubbabel.
After these grandsons of Zerubbabel, there are ranged in 1Ch 3:21, without any copula whatever, four families, the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, etc.; and of the last named of these, the sons of Shecaniah, four generations of descendants are enumerated in 1Ch 3:22-24, without any hint as to the genealogical connection of Shecaniah with the grandsons of Zerubbabel. The assertion of more modern critics, Ewald, Bertheau, and others, that Shecaniah was a brother or a son of Pelatiah or Jesaiah, and that Zerubbabel's family is traced down through six generations, owes its origin to the wish to gain support for the opinion that the Chronicle was composed long after Ezra, and is without any foundation. The argument of Bertheau, that “since the sons of Rephaiah, etc., run parallel with the preceding names Pelatiah and Jesaiah, and since the continuation of the list in 1Ch 3:22 is connected with the last mentioned Shecaniah, we cannot but believe that Pelatiah, Jesaiah, Rephaiah, Arnan, Obadiah, and Shecaniah are, without exception, sons of Hananiah,” would be well founded if, and only if, the names Rephaiah, Arnan, etc., stood in our verse, instead of the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, etc., for Pelatiah and Jesaiah are not parallel with the sons of Arnan. Pelatiah and Jesaiah may perhaps be sons of Hananiah, but not the sons of Rephaiah, Arnan, etc. These would be grandsons of Hananiah, on the assumption that Rephaiah, Arnan, etc., were brothers of Pelatiah and Jesaiah, and sons of Hananiah. But for this assumption there is no tenable ground; it would be justified only if our present Masoretic text could lay claim to infallibility. Only on the ground of a belief in this infallibility of the traditional text could we explain to ourselves, as Bertheau does, the ranging of the sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, etc., along with Pelatiah and Jesaiah, called sons of Hananiah, by supposing that Rephaiah, Arnan, Obadiah, and Shecaniah are not named as individuals, but are mentioned together with their families, because they were the progenitors of famous races, while Pelatiah and Jesaiah either had no descendants at all, or none at least who were at all renowned. The text, as we have it, in which the sons of Rephaiah, etc., follow the names of the grandsons of Zerubbabel without a conjunction, and in which the words שְׁכַנְיָה וּבְנֵי, and a statement of the names of one of these בָּנִים and his further descendants, follow the immediately preceding שְׁכַנְיָה בְּנֵי, has no meaning, and is clearly corrupt, as has been recognised by Heidegger, Vitringa, Carpzov, and others. Owing, however, to want of information from other sources regarding these families and their connection with the descendants of Zerubbabel, we have no means whatever of restoring the original text. The sons of Rephaiah, the sons of Arnan, etc., were, it may be supposed, branches of the family of David, whose descent or connection with Zerubbabel is for us unascertainable. The list from רְפָיָה בְּנֵי, 1Ch 3:21, to the end of the chapter, is a genealogical fragment, which has perhaps come into the text of the Chronicle at a later time.
(Note: Yet at a very early time, for the lxx had before them our present text, and sought to make sense of it by expressing the four times recurring בְּנֵי, 1Ch 3:21, by the singular בְּנֹו in every case, as follows: καὶ Ἰεσίας υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, Ῥαφὰλ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, Ὀρνὰ υἱὸς αὐτοῦ, etc.; according to which, between Hananiah and Shecaniah seven consecutive generations would be enumerated, and Zerubbabel's family traced down through eleven generations. So also Vulg. and Syr.)
Many of the names which this fragment contains are met with singly in genealogies of other tribes, but nowhere in a connection from which we might drawn conclusions as to the origin of the families here enumerated, and the age in which they lived. Bertheau, indeed, thinks “we may in any case hold Hattush, 1Ch 3:22, for the descendant of David of the same name mentioned in Ezr 8:2, who lived at the time of Ezra;” but he has apparently forgotten that, according to his interpretation of our verse, Hattush would be a great-grandson of Zerubbabel, who, even if he were then born, could not possibly have been a man and the head of a family at the time of his supposed return from Babylon with Ezra, seventy-eight years after the return of his great-grandfather to Palestine. Other men too, even priests, have borne the name Hattush; cf. Neh 3:10; Neh 10:5; Neh 12:2. There returned, moreover, from Babylon with Ezra sons of Shecaniah (Ezr 8:3), who may as justly be identified with the sons of Shecaniah mentioned in 1Ch 3:22 of our chapter as forefathers or ancestors of Hattush, as the Hattush here is identified with the Hattush of Ezr 8:2. But from the fact that, in the genealogy of Jesus, Matt 1, not a single one of the names of descendants of Zerubbabel there enumerated coincides with the names given in our verses, we may conclude that the descendants of Shecaniah enumerated in 1Ch 3:22-24 did not descend from Zerubbabel in a direct line. Intermediate members are, it is true, often omitted in genealogical lists; but who would maintain that in Matthew seven, or, according to the other interpretation of our verse, nine, consecutive members have been at one bound overleapt? This weighty consideration, which has been brought forward by Clericus, is passed over in silence by the defenders of the opinion that our verses contain a continuation of the genealogy of Zerubbabel. The only other remark to be made about this fragment is, that in 1Ch 3:22 the number of the sons of Shecaniah is given as six, while only five names are mentioned, and that consequently a name must have fallen out by mistake in transcribing. Nothing further can be said of these families, as they are otherwise quite unknown.