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1 Chronicles 5: What the Passage Says

85 claims across 26 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What 1 Chronicles 5 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter lists the families and the land of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, the tribes that settled east of the Jordan River. It explains that Reuben lost the firstborn's rights to Joseph's sons, records a war in which these tribes defeated the Hagarites and took much livestock and many captives, and names their leaders. It ends by reporting that they were unfaithful to God and worshiped the gods of that land, so God stirred up the kings of Assyria, who carried them away into exile.

Claim by Claim

  1. 5:1
    • Reuben was the firstborn son of Israel
    • This lists the sons of Reuben
    • Reuben defiled his father's bed
    • Because Reuben defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph son of Israel
    • Reuben is not reckoned in the genealogy according to the birthright
  2. 5:2
    • Judah prevailed over his brothers
    • A chief ruler came from Judah
    • The birthright belonged to Joseph
  3. 5:3
    • The sons of Reuben the firstborn of Israel were Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi
  4. 5:4
    • The descendants of Joel included Shemaiah his son
    • Gog was the son of Shemaiah
    • Shimei was the son of Gog
  5. 5:5
    • Micah was the son of Shimei
    • Reaiah was the son of Micah
    • Baal was the son of Reaiah
  6. 5:6
    • Beerah was the son of Baal
    • Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria carried Beerah away into exile
    • Beerah was a chief of the Reubenites
  7. 5:7
    • Beerah's kinsmen were listed by their families in the genealogical record of their generations
    • Jeiel was the chief
    • Zechariah is listed among them
  8. 5:8
    • Bela was the son of Azaz
    • Azaz was the son of Shema
    • Shema was the son of Joel
    • Bela dwelt in Aroer, as far as Nebo and Baal-meon
  9. 5:9
    • He also settled eastward as far as the edge of the wilderness that extends from the Euphrates River
    • Their livestock had multiplied in the land of Gilead
  10. 5:10
    • In the days of Saul they made war against the Hagrites
    • The Hagrites fell by their hand
    • They dwelt in the tents of the Hagrites throughout all the land east of Gilead
  11. 5:11
    • The sons of Gad dwelt opposite the Reubenites
    • The sons of Gad dwelt in the land of Bashan as far as Salcah
  12. 5:12
    • Joel was the chief
    • Shapham was second
    • Jaanai and Shaphat were in Bashan
  13. 5:13
    • Their kinsmen by their fathers' houses were Michael, Meshullam, Sheba, Jorai, Jachan, Zia, and Heber
    • They were seven in number
  14. 5:14
    • These were the sons of Abihail son of Huri
    • Huri was the son of Jaroah
    • Jaroah was the son of Gilead
    • Gilead was the son of Michael
    • Michael was the son of Jeshishai
    • Jeshishai was the son of Jahdo
    • Jahdo was the son of Buz
  15. 5:15
    • Ahi was the son of Abdiel
    • Abdiel was the son of Guni
    • Ahi was head of their fathers' house
  16. 5:16
    • They dwelt in Gilead, in Bashan and its towns
    • They dwelt in all the pasturelands of Sharon as far as their limits
  17. 5:17
    • All of these were recorded in the genealogies in the days of Jotham king of Judah
    • All of these were recorded in the genealogies in the days of Jeroboam king of Israel
  18. 5:18
    • The sons of Reuben, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh had valiant men
    • These men could carry shield and sword and shoot the bow
    • These men were skilled in war
    • They numbered forty-four thousand seven hundred sixty
    • They went out to war
  19. 5:19
    • They made war against the Hagrites
    • They made war against Jetur, Nephish, and Nodab
  20. 5:20
    • They were helped against them
    • The Hagrites and all who were with them were delivered into their hand
    • They cried out to God in the battle
    • God granted their entreaty
    • They put their trust in God
  21. 5:21
    • They captured their livestock
    • They took fifty thousand camels
    • They took two hundred fifty thousand sheep
    • They took two thousand donkeys
    • They took one hundred thousand human beings
  22. 5:22
    • Many fell down slain
    • The war was of God
    • They dwelt in the place of the Hagrites until the captivity
  23. 5:23
    • The children of the half-tribe of Manasseh dwelt in the land
    • They were numerous from Bashan to Baal-hermon and Senir and Mount Hermon
  24. 5:24
    • These were the heads of their fathers' houses: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, and Jahdiel
    • They were mighty men of valor
    • They were men of renown
    • They were heads of their fathers' houses
  25. 5:25
    • They acted unfaithfully against the God of their fathers
    • They prostituted themselves after the gods of the peoples of the land
    • God had destroyed those peoples before them
  26. 5:26
    • The God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria
    • The God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria
    • He carried away the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh
    • He brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan
    • They are there to this day

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1
"Israel" here is the man Jacob, who was renamed Israel; his twelve sons became the twelve tribes. "Defiled his father's bed" refers to Reuben sleeping with Bilhah, his father's concubine (Genesis 35:22). The "rights of the firstborn" (birthright) meant a double share of the inheritance and leadership of the family; transferring them to Joseph's sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, is why those two count as separate tribes. The last sentence is compressed in the Hebrew and hard to pin down: the point is roughly that although Reuben was firstborn, the official records do not give him the firstborn's place.
5:2
Judah produced the royal line, David and his descendants, while Joseph's sons got the firstborn's double portion of land. The verse is noting that the two privileges, rule and inheritance, went to different brothers.
5:3
"The sons, I say" is the King James translators picking up the sentence again after the long explanation in verses 1 and 2. It is not a phrase in the Hebrew; it simply means "so, returning to the sons of Reuben."
5:4
The text does not say how this Joel connects to the four sons just listed. Ancient genealogies routinely skip generations and jump between branches; the gaps are normal, not errors in copying.
5:6
Tilgathpilneser is Tiglath-pileser III, king of Assyria roughly 745–727 BC. Assyria was the dominant empire of the day, based in what is now northern Iraq, and it deliberately deported conquered populations to distant provinces to break their ability to rebel.
5:7
Israelite families kept written genealogies because they determined who held which land, who owed military service, and who could claim a share of an inheritance. A list like this was closer to a land registry than to a family scrapbook.
5:8
Aroer, Nebo and Baalmeon are towns east of the Dead Sea, in what is now Jordan, territory Israel and Moab contested for centuries.
5:9
Gilead is the highland region east of the Jordan River, good grazing country. "The edge of the desert that stretches to the Euphrates" means the Syrian desert, not that they settled at the river itself.
5:10
The Hagarites (Hagrites) were nomadic herding tribes east of Gilead. The name links them to Hagar, Abraham's Egyptian slave and the mother of Ishmael. "Lived in the tents of" means they took over the Hagarites' grazing grounds and encampments.
5:11
Bashan is the fertile plateau east of the Sea of Galilee, in the modern Golan and southern Syria, famous in the Hebrew Bible for its cattle and oaks. Salcah marked its eastern edge.
5:16
This Sharon is not the coastal plain of the same name in western Israel; it is a district east of the Jordan. The King James "suburbs" does not mean outskirts of a city in the modern sense: it translates a word for the open pasture belonging to a town.
5:17
After Solomon's death the kingdom split in two: Judah in the south and Israel in the north. Jotham reigned in Judah and Jeroboam II in the north, so this dates the records to roughly the eighth century BC.
5:18
Manasseh's territory was divided by the Jordan River, half the tribe settling on the east bank with Reuben and Gad and half on the west, which is why the text repeatedly says "half the tribe." The King James "buckler" is a small round shield.
5:19
Jetur, Nephish and Nodab were Arab tribes of the same nomadic world as the Hagarites; Jetur and Nephish are named elsewhere as sons of Ishmael.
5:20
"He was intreated of them" is King James English for "he responded to their request." To entreat meant to make an urgent appeal, and to be entreated meant to grant it, so the phrase says God answered their prayer, not that they persuaded a reluctant God.
5:21
The numbers are very large, as ancient battle and plunder figures often are; the Hebrew word for "thousand" can also mean a military unit or a clan contingent, so the scale is uncertain. The captured people would have become slaves or forced labor.
5:22
"The battle belonged to God" is a standard Hebrew way of saying the war was fought at God's initiative and its outcome was his doing, not the fighters'. "Until the exile" points ahead to verse 26, when Assyria deported these tribes.
5:23
Mount Hermon is the snow-capped peak on the modern Lebanon–Syria border, the highest point in the region. Senir and Baalhermon are names for the mountain or parts of its range.
5:25
"Went a whoring after other gods" is a fixed Hebrew image, not a description of sexual conduct: Israel's bond with its God is pictured as a marriage, so worshiping other gods is described as adultery.
5:26
Pul was the name Tiglath-pileser used as king of Babylon; the writer is noting that the two names are one man. Halah, Habor, Hara and Gozan are districts in upper Mesopotamia, several hundred miles from Gilead. "Where they still are today" means as of the writer's own time, centuries before ours.

Read 1 Chronicles 5