1 Chronicles 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter lists the family lines of Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim, and Asher, with the number of fighting men counted in several of those clans. Along the way it notes that some of Ephraim's sons were killed by men of Gath while raiding cattle, that Ephraim mourned and later had a son named Beriah, and that his daughter Sheerah built three towns. It closes by naming the towns and villages where Joseph's descendants lived, and by counting Asher's men fit for battle.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The sons of Issachar were Tola, Puah, Jashub, and Shimron.
   • Issachar's sons numbered four.
2. 7:2
   • The sons of Tola were Uzzi, Rephaiah, Jeriel, Jahmai, Ibsam, and Shemuel.
   • These were heads of their fathers' houses, belonging to Tola.
   • They were mighty warriors in their generations.
   • Their number in the days of David was 22,600.
3. 7:3
   • The son of Uzzi was Izrahiah.
   • The sons of Izrahiah were Michael, Obadiah, Joel, and Isshiah.
   • They numbered five.
   • All of them were chiefs.
4. 7:4
   • Along with them, by their generations and fathers' houses, were troops of an army for war numbering 36,000.
   • They had that many troops because they had many wives and sons.
5. 7:5
   • Their kinsmen throughout all the families of Issachar were mighty warriors.
   • They totaled 87,000 when all were enrolled by genealogy.
6. 7:6
   • The sons of Benjamin were Bela, Becher, and Jediael.
   • They numbered three.
7. 7:7
   • The sons of Bela were Ezbon, Uzzi, Uzziel, Jerimoth, and Iri.
   • They numbered five.
   • They were heads of fathers' houses.
   • They were mighty warriors.
   • Their genealogical enrollment was 22,034.
8. 7:8
   • The sons of Becher were Zemirah, Joash, Eliezer, Elioenai, Omri, Jeremoth, Abijah, Anathoth, and Alemeth.
   • All these were the sons of Becher.
9. 7:9
   • Their genealogical enrollment, by their generations, listed heads of their fathers' houses.
   • They were mighty warriors.
   • Their number was 20,200.
10. 7:10
    • The son of Jediael was Bilhan.
    • The sons of Bilhan were Jeush, Benjamin, Ehud, Chenaanah, Zethan, Tarshish, and Ahishahar.
11. 7:11
    • All these were the sons of Jediael, by the heads of their fathers' houses.
    • They were mighty warriors.
    • They numbered 17,200.
    • They were fit to go out with the army to war.
12. 7:12
    • Shuppim and Huppim were the sons of Ir.
    • Hushim was the son of Aher.
13. 7:13
    • The sons of Naphtali were Jahziel, Guni, Jezer, and Shallum.
    • They were the sons of Bilhah.
14. 7:14
    • The sons of Manasseh included Asriel.
    • Asriel was borne by a woman whom the text does not identify.
    • Manasseh's Aramean concubine bore Machir.
    • Machir was the father of Gilead.
15. 7:15
    • Machir took a wife in connection with Huppim and Shuppim, whether as their sister or from among them the text leaves unclear.
    • The name of his sister was Maacah.
    • The name of the second was Zelophehad.
    • Zelophehad had daughters.
16. 7:16
    • Maacah the wife of Machir bore a son.
    • She named him Peresh.
    • The name of his brother was Sheresh.
    • Sheresh's sons were Ulam and Rakem.
17. 7:17
    • The son of Ulam was Bedan.
    • These were the sons of Gilead.
    • Gilead was the son of Machir.
    • Machir was the son of Manasseh.
18. 7:18
    • His sister Hammolecheth bore Ishhod, Abiezer, and Mahlah.
19. 7:19
    • The sons of Shemida were Ahian, Shechem, Likhi, and Aniam.
20. 7:20
    • The son of Ephraim was Shuthelah.
    • Bered was Shuthelah's son.
    • Tahath was Bered's son.
    • Eleadah was Tahath's son.
    • Tahath was Eleadah's son.
21. 7:21
    • Zabad was Tahath's son.
    • Shuthelah was Zabad's son.
    • Ezer and Elead were also of this line.
    • The men of Gath who were born in the land killed Ezer and Elead.
    • Ezer and Elead were killed because they went down to take the cattle of the men of Gath.
22. 7:22
    • Ephraim their father mourned for many days.
    • His brothers came to comfort him.
23. 7:23
    • Ephraim went in to his wife.
    • She conceived.
    • She bore a son.
    • He named the son Beriah.
    • He gave that name because misfortune had come upon his house.
24. 7:24
    • His daughter was Sheerah.
    • Sheerah built Lower Beth-horon.
    • Sheerah built Upper Beth-horon.
    • Sheerah built Uzzen-sheerah.
25. 7:25
    • Rephah was his son.
    • Resheph was of this line.
    • Telah was his son.
    • Tahan was his son.
26. 7:26
    • Ladan was his son.
    • Ammihud was his son.
    • Elishama was his son.
27. 7:27
    • Nun was his son.
    • Joshua was his son.
28. 7:28
    • Their possessions and settlements were Bethel and its villages.
    • To the east was Naaran.
    • To the west was Gezer with its villages.
    • Shechem and its villages were theirs.
    • Their territory extended as far as Ayyah and its villages.
29. 7:29
    • Along the borders of the sons of Manasseh were Beth-shean and its villages.
    • Taanach and its villages were there.
    • Megiddo and its villages were there.
    • Dor and its villages were there.
    • The sons of Joseph son of Israel dwelt in these places.
30. 7:30
    • The sons of Asher were Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, and Beriah.
    • Serah was their sister.
31. 7:31
    • The sons of Beriah were Heber and Malchiel.
    • Malchiel was the father of Birzaith.
32. 7:32
    • Heber fathered Japhlet, Shomer, and Hotham.
    • Heber fathered Shua, their sister.
33. 7:33
    • The sons of Japhlet were Pasach, Bimhal, and Ashvath.
    • These were the sons of Japhlet.
34. 7:34
    • The sons of Shemer were Ahi, Rohgah, Hubbah, and Aram.
35. 7:35
    • The sons of his brother Helem were Zophah, Imna, Shelesh, and Amal.
36. 7:36
    • The sons of Zophah were Suah, Harnepher, Shual, Beri, and Imrah.
37. 7:37
    • Bezer, Hod, Shamma, Shilshah, Ithran, and Beera were also sons of Zophah.
38. 7:38
    • The sons of Jether were Jephunneh, Pispa, and Ara.
39. 7:39
    • The sons of Ulla were Arah, Hanniel, and Rizia.
40. 7:40
    • All these were the sons of Asher.
    • They were heads of their fathers' houses.
    • They were select, mighty warriors.
    • They were chiefs among the princes.
    • Those enrolled by genealogy for army service in war numbered 26,000 men.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

Issachar was one of the twelve tribes of Israel, each named for a son (or in two cases a grandson) of Jacob. Throughout this chapter "sons of" usually means "descendants of," covering many generations rather than one family of children, and the lists move between individuals, clans and whole districts without saying which is which.

7:2

The phrase behind "strong fighting men" (Hebrew gibborey hayil) is standard in muster lists. It means men of standing liable for military service, and can carry a sense of property and social weight as well as prowess in battle. The figures that follow are census totals of the kind described in 2 Samuel 24, counting men available to fight rather than total population.

7:4

More wives meant more sons, and so more men available for the tribal levy. Multiple wives were legal and normal in wealthy Israelite households, and the verse cites this simply as the reason for the high count.

7:5

The Hebrew word translated "thousand" (eleph) can also mean a clan or a military unit of unspecified size. This is one reason the tribal totals in Chronicles run so much higher than the likely population of ancient Israel, and why scholars disagree over how to read them.

7:6

Benjamin's descendants are listed again, at greater length and with different names, in chapter 8. Ancient family lists of the same tribe often disagree in detail, since they were compiled from different sources at different dates.

7:10

This Benjamin is not the son of Jacob but a much later man who carried the same name. Israelite families reused ancestral names constantly, which is why the same handful of names keeps reappearing in these lists.

7:12

This is the most obscure verse in the chapter; the Hebrew does not make clear whose descendants these people are or how they connect to what comes before. Two of the twelve tribes, Dan and Zebulun, are missing from this chapter, and because Genesis 46:23 names Hushim as Dan's son, some read "Aher", a word that simply means "another", as a damaged reference to Dan.

7:13

Bilhah was Rachel's slave, given to Jacob as a secondary wife; she bore Dan and Naphtali (Genesis 30). Naming the mother identifies which of Jacob's four wives a tribe descends from, a distinction that mattered for rank among the tribes.

7:14

A concubine was a legally recognized secondary wife, usually a slave or a foreign woman, of lower standing than a full wife; her children could still count as legitimate heirs. "Aramean" means she came from Aram, the region roughly covering modern Syria. Gilead here is a person, but also the name of the hill country east of the Jordan river that Machir's descendants settled.

7:15

The Hebrew of verses 14 to 16 is unusually tangled, and translations differ over who is whose sister, wife or son. Zelophehad's daughters are singled out because he had no sons: Numbers 27 and 36 record the five of them petitioning Moses, and the ruling that followed allowed daughters to inherit land when there was no son, provided they married inside their own tribe. A line with only daughters otherwise risked losing its land to another family.

7:18

The name Hammolecheth means something like "the queen" or "she who rules." It is unusual for these lists to trace a line through a woman at all.

7:19

Shemidah, along with Abiezer above and Shechem here, appear in Numbers 26 and Joshua 17 as the recognized clans of Manasseh. Shechem is also a major city, showing how a clan name and the place that clan held could be the same word.

7:20

Ephraim and Manasseh were the two sons of Joseph. Each of them became a tribe of its own.

7:21

Gath was one of the five chief Philistine cities, in the lowlands near the coast. "Born in that land" marks them as the native inhabitants rather than settlers. Raiding a neighbor's livestock was a common form of low-level warfare; here it is Ephraim's sons who go down to raid, and they are killed doing it.

7:22

Formal mourning ran for a set period, and relatives were expected to come and sit with the bereaved rather than leave him alone, the same custom that lies behind Job's friends coming to him.

7:23

The name Beriah sounds like the Hebrew phrase be-ra'ah, "in misfortune." Hebrew names were often given as a play on words describing the circumstances of a birth, which is why the verse pauses to explain it.

7:24

"Built" here means founded, or rebuilt and fortified with walls. Upper and Lower Beth-horon were twin towns guarding the steep pass that climbs from the coastal plain into the central hill country, one of the most strategically important roads in the land. Uzzen-sheerah carries her own name. A woman credited with founding towns is very rare in these records.

7:25

This goes back to Ephraim's family list again. Each name is the son of the one before it.

7:27

This is Joshua son of Nun, who succeeded Moses and led Israel into Canaan. Placing him at the end of Ephraim's line is much of the reason the line is recorded here at all.

7:28

The word rendered "villages" is literally "daughters" in Hebrew: the small unwalled settlements that depended on a walled town for protection and administration. The King James Version ends the list with "Gaza," following the Hebrew name Azzah; but Gaza was a Philistine city far to the southwest, well outside Ephraim's territory, so most modern translations read the name as Ayyah, a place nearer Shechem.

7:29

These four towns lie across the Jezreel valley and the plain along the northern edge of Manasseh's territory. Judges 1:27 says Manasseh never drove out their Canaanite inhabitants, which is why the verse speaks of them as bordering Manasseh rather than belonging to it. "The descendants of Joseph" covers Ephraim and Manasseh together: Joseph had no tribe under his own name, his two sons each becoming a tribe instead.

7:30

Daughters are named in these lists only occasionally, usually when they mattered for inheritance or when an older tradition remembered them by name. Serah reappears in the lists of those who went down to Egypt in Genesis 46 and Numbers 26.

7:31

Calling a man the father of a town means he started that town. The people who lived there came from his family.

7:34

"Shomer" here is the same man as the Shomer of verse 32; the King James Version spells it "Shamer," following a variant in the Hebrew. Small spelling differences between manuscripts are common in these name lists, which is why the same person can appear under two forms within a few verses.

7:40

"Chief among the leaders" translates a word (nasi) used for the head of a tribal subdivision, a man who spoke and acted for his clan. As at the start of the chapter, the closing figure counts men fit for the tribal levy, not the whole population.