Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 4:21 - 4:21
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Descendants of Shelah, the third son of Judah, 1Ch 2:3, and Gen 38:5. - All the families of Judah enumerated in vv. 2-20 are connected together by the conjunction ו, and so are grouped as descendants of the sons and grandsons of Judah named in 1Ch 4:1. The conjunction is omitted, however, before שֵׁלָה בְּנֵי, as also before יְהוּדָה בְּנֵי in 1Ch 4:3, to show that the descendants of Shelah form a second line of descendants of Judah, co-ordinate with the sons of Judah enumerated in vv. 1-19, concerning whom only a little obscure but not unimportant information has been preserved. Those mentioned as sons are Er (which also was the name of the first-born of Judah, 1Ch 2:3.), father of Lecah, and Laadan, the father of Mareshah. The latter name denotes, beyond question, a town which still exists as the ruin Marash in the Shephelah, Jos 15:44 (see on 1Ch 2:42), and consequently Lecah (לֵכָה) also is the name of a locality not elsewhere mentioned. The further descendants of Shelah were, “the families of the Byssus-work of the house of Ashbea,” i.e., the families of Ashbea, a man of whom nothing further is known. Of these families some were connected with a famous weaving-house or linen (Byssus) manufactory, probably in Egypt; and then further, in 1Ch 4:22, “Jokim, and the man of Chozeba, and Joash, and Saraph, which ruled over Moab, and Jashubi-lehem.” Kimchi conjectured that כֹּזֵבָה was the place called כְזִיב in Gen 38:5 = אַכְזִיב, Jos 15:44, in the low land, where Shelah was born. לֶחֶם יָשֻׁבִי is a strange name, “which the punctuators would hardly have pronounced in the way they have done if it had not come down to them by tradition” (Berth.). The other names denote heads of families or branches of families, the branches and families being included in them.
(Note: Jerome has given a curious translation of 1Ch 4:22, “et qui stare fecit solem, virique mendacii et securus et incendens, qui principes fuerunt in Moab et qui reversi sunt in Lahem: haec autem verba vetera,” - according to the Jewish Midrash, in which לְמֹואָב בָּעֲלוּ אֲשֶׁר was connected with the narrative in the book of Ruth. For יֹוקִים, qui stare fecit solem, is supposed to be Elimelech, and the viri mendacii Mahlon and Chilion, so well known from the book of Ruth, who went with their father into the land of Moab and married Moabitesses.)
Nothing is told us of them beyond what is found in our verses, according to which the four first named ruled over Moab during a period in the primeval time; fir, as the historian himself remarks, “these things are old.”