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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - 1 Chronicles 8:17 - 8:17
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Bertheau would identify three of the sons of Elpaal - Meshullam, Heber, and Ishmerai - with Misham, Eber, and Shemer, 1Ch 8:12, but without any sufficient reason; for it is questionable if even the Elpaal whose sons are named in our verses be the same person as the Elpaal mentioned in 1Ch 8:12. Of these descendants of Elpaal, also, nothing further is known, and the same may be said of the nine sons of Shimhi, 1Ch 8:19-21; of the eleven sons of Shashak, 1Ch 8:22-25; and of the six sons of Jeroham, 1Ch 8:26, 1Ch 8:27, although some of these names are met with elsewhere singly. The concluding remark, 1Ch 8:28, “These are heads of fathers'-houses,” refers, without doubt, to all the names from 1Ch 8:15 or 1Ch 8:14 to 1Ch 8:27. “According to their generations - heads” is in apposition to the preceding, as in 1Ch 9:24, but the meaning of the apposition is doubtful. The word רָאשִׁים can hardly be repeated merely for emphasis, as the old commentators understood it, in harmony with the Vulgate principes inquam, for why should this word be so emphasized? Bertheau thinks that “according to their births - heads” is to be taken to mean that those who are enumerated by name are not the heads living at the time of the preparation of this register, but the individual families, with the name of their progenitor after whom they were named in the genealogical lists. But how this meaning can be found in the words in question, I at least cannot understand. Can the individual families be called אָבֹות רָאשֵׁי, “heads of fathers'-houses”? The families are the fathers'-houses themselves, i.e., they are made up of the groups of related households comprehended under the name fathers'-houses. These groups of related households have, it is true, each of them either head, but cannot possibly be themselves called heads. The meaning seems rather to be that the persons named in the family registers, or registers of births, are introduced as heads (of fathers'-houses); and the reason why this is remarked would seem to be, to prevent those who are enumerated as the sons of this or that man from being regarded simply as members of fathers'-houses. The further remark, “these dwelt in Jerusalem,” is manifestly not to be taken to mean that the heads alone dwelt there, while the households that were subordinated to them lived elsewhere; for it signifies that they dwelt in Jerusalem with the households which composed their respective fathers'-houses. That the households dwelt there also is not stated, merely because the register contains only the names of the heads.