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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 5:23 - 5:23
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The families of the half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, and the leading away of the East-Jordan Israelites into the Assyrian exile. - 1Ch 5:23. The half-tribe of Manasseh in Bashan was very numerous (רָבוּ הֵמָּה), “and they dwelt in the land of Bashan (i.e., the Bashan inhabited by Gad, 1Ch 5:12) (northwards) to Baal Hermon,” - i.e., according to the more accurate designation of the place in Jos 12:7 and Jos 13:5, in the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon, probably the present Bânjas, at the foot of Hermon (see on Num 34:8), - “and Senir and Mount Hermon.” שְׂנִיר, which according to Deu 3:9 was the name of Hermon or Antilibanus in use among the Amorites, is here and in Eze 27:5 the name of a part of those mountains (vide on Deu 3:9), just as “mount Hermon” is the name of another part of this range.
1Ch 5:24
Seven heads of fathers'-houses of the half-tribe of Manasseh are enumerated, and characterized as valiant heroes and famous men. The enumeration of the names begins strangely with ו (וְאֵפֶר); perhaps a name has fallen out before it. Nothing has been handed down as to any of these names.
1Ch 5:25-26
1Ch 5:25 and 1Ch 5:26 form the conclusion of the register of the two and a half trans-Jordanic tribes. The sons of Manasseh are not the subject to וַיִּמְעֲלוּ, but the Reubenites and Manassites, as is clear from 1Ch 5:26. These fell away faithlessly from the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God had destroyed before them, i.e., the Amorites or Canaanites. “And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of the Assyrian kings Pul and Tiglath-pilneser, and he (this latter) led them away captives to Halah and Habor,” etc. אֶת־רוּחַ וַיָּעַר, Lavater has rightly rendered, “in mentem illis dedit, movit eos, ut expeditionem facerent contra illos;” cf. 2Ch 21:16. Pul is mentioned as being the first Assyrian king who attacked the land of Israel, cf. 2Ki 15:19. The deportation began, however, only with Tiglath-pileser, who led the East-Jordan tribes into exile, 2Ki 15:29. To him וַיַּגְלֵם sing. refers. The suffix is defined by the following acc., וגו לָרעוּבֵנִי; לְ is, according to the later usage, nota acc.; cf. Ew. §277, e. So also before the name חֲלַח, “to Halah,” i.e., probably the district Καλαχήνη (in Strabo) on the east side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh, on the frontier of Armenia (cf. on 2Ki 17:6). In the second book of Kings (1Ch 15:29) the district to which the two and a half tribes were sent as exiles is not accurately determined, being only called in general Asshur (Assyria). The names in our verse are there (2Ki 17:6) the names of the districts to which Shalmaneser sent the remainder of the ten tribes after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. It is therefore questionable whether the author of the Chronicle took his account from an authority used by him, or if he names these districts only according to general recollection, in which the times of Shalmaneser and of Tiglath-pileser are not very accurately distinguished (Berth.). We consider the first supposition the more probable, not merely because he inverts the order of the names, but mainly because he gives the name הָרָא instead of “the cities of Media,” as it is in Kings, and that name he could only have obtained from his authorities. חָבֹור is not the river Chaboras in Mesopotamia, which falls into the Euphrates near Circesium, for that river is called in Ezekiel כְּבַר, but is a district in northern Assyria, where Jakut mentions that there is both a mountain Χαβώρας on the frontier of Assyria and Media (Ptolem. vi. 1), and a river Khabur Chasaniae, which still bears the old name Khâbur, rising in the neighbourhood of the upper Zab, near Amadijeh, and falling into the Tigris below Jezirah. This Khâbur is the river of Gozan (vide on 2Ki 17:6). The word הָרָא appears to be the Aramaic form of the Hebrew הָר, mountains, and the vernacular designation usual in the mouths of the people of the mountain land of Media, which is called also in Arabic el Jebâl (the mountains). This name can therefore only have been handed down from the exiles who dwelt there.