Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Chronicles · About this commentary
The House of Judah
1 Chronicles 2:1-55
1 These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, · WEB
Judah's register names the wicked, the troubler and the foreigner, and the line to David runs through all of them.
The twelve sons of Israel are listed in order 1 Chronicles 2:1–2, and the register then goes straight to the fourth of them and stays there for two chapters. Judah is where the writer's interest lies, and he does not pretend otherwise.
What follows is not a clean pedigree.
The first descendant named is a man God put to death for wickedness 1 Chronicles 2:3. The line then continues through Tamar, who is identified in the same verse as Judah's daughter-in-law 1 Chronicles 2:4. The relationship is stated and not softened.
A few verses later a name is spelled so as to carry a verdict. The man who took from the devoted things at Jericho is called Achan where the event is told Joshua 7:1; here he is Achar, the troubler of Israel 1 Chronicles 2:7, the name bent toward the word for what he did. A list can pronounce judgment, and this one does.
Then the line to David, ten generations in three verses, from Ram through Boaz and Obed to Jesse 1 Chronicles 2:10–12. The sons are numbered off, and David is the seventh 1 Chronicles 2:15. The account in Samuel has Jesse pass seven sons before the prophet and then send for David 1 Samuel 16:10–11, and says elsewhere that he had eight sons 1 Samuel 17:12. The registers differ, and there is no way to settle whether a son died young or was left uncounted. What both agree on is that David was the last.
Two further entries are worth marking. Bezalel, who made the tabernacle furniture, is set inside Judah's line 1 Chronicles 2:20 — a craftsman placed among princes, in a book whose subject is a sanctuary. And Sheshan, having no sons, gives his daughter to an Egyptian servant, and the line runs on through him for ten more names 1 Chronicles 2:34–41.
The chapter ends further out still. Families of scribes are recorded, and with them Kenites of the house of Rechab 1 Chronicles 2:55 — a clan that was not Israelite at all, entered inside Judah's register.
So the tribe that carries the promise is documented as a mixed and compromised body. Nothing is edited out, and the effect is the opposite of a boast.
settled What this mark means