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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 5:10 - 5:10
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“In the days of Saul they made war upon the Hagarites, and they fill into their hands, and they dwelt in their tents over the whole east side of Gilead.” The subject is not determined, so that the words may be referred either to the whole tribe of Reuben or to the family of Bela (1Ch 5:8). The circumstance that in 1Ch 5:8 and 1Ch 5:9 Bela is spoken of in the singular (יֹושֵׁב הוּא and יָשַׁב), while here the plural is used in reference to the war, is not sufficient to show that the words do not refer to Bela's family, for the narrative has already fallen into the plural in the last clause of 1Ch 5:9. We therefore think it better to refer 1Ch 5:10 to the family of Bela, seeing that the wide spread of this family, which is mentioned in 1Ch 5:9, as far as the desert to the east of the inhabited land, presupposes the driving out of the Hagarites dwelling on the eastern plain of Gilead. The notice of this war, moreover, is clearly inserted here for the purpose of explaining the wide spread of the Belaites even to the Euphrates desert, and there is nothing which can be adduced against that reference. The אֶחָיו in 1Ch 5:7 does not, as Bertheau thinks probable, denote that Bela was a contemporary of Beerah, even if the circumstance that from Bela to Joel only three generations are enumerated, could be reconciled with this supposition. The spread of Bela's family over the whole of the Reubenite Gilead, which has just been narrated, proves decisively that they were not contemporaries. If Bela lived at the time of the invasion of Gilead by Tiglath-pileser, when the prince Beerah was carried away into exile, it is certainly possible that he might have escaped the Assyrians; but he could neither have had at that time a family “which inhabited all the east land,” nor could he himself have extended his domain from “Aroer and Nebo towards the wilderness,” as the words יֹושֵׁב הוּא, 1Ch 5:8, distinctly state. We therefore hold that Bela was much older than Beerah, for he is introduced as a great-grandson of Joel, so that his family might have been as widely distributed as 1Ch 5:8, 1Ch 5:9 state, and have undertaken and carried out the war of conquest against the Hagarites, referred to in 1Ch 5:10, as early as the time of Saul. Thus, too, we can most easily explain the fact that Bela and his brothers Jeiel and Zechariah are not mentioned. As to הַגְרִעִים, cf. on 1Ch 5:19.