These are the sons of Caleb. The sons of Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah Shobal the father of Kirjath-jearim,
One line of names closes a long family list: Caleb, Hur the firstborn of Ephratah, and Shobal, called the father of a town. It reads like dry record-keeping. Yet it raises two real questions: why is a man named the father of a town, and why does Caleb's family keep coming back in this chapter?
Many families in Israel could no longer prove who their ancestors were. One writer explains what the record fell back on, and points to this verse as an example.
Many of them had no family head left to name. Even so, they could still be recognized by the names of their families, groups, and cities. A name like that became, in effect, a "moral person," recognized as the stem of their ancestry (compare Ezra 1 and here 1 Chronicles 2:50, 54-55; 1 Chronicles 4:4). The great disorder that came in also explains, at least in part, why very distant descendants of the head of a clan were counted as his sons. Take Shobal, for example, the great-grandson of one of Judah's grandsons (compare 1 Chronicles 2:50; 1 Chronicles 4:1).
So "father of Kiriath-jearim" marks the head of a clan tied to a town, and "son" can reach far down a line.
Two men in Scripture carry the name Caleb. The one traced in these verses is the son of Hezron.
In verses 50-55, for the third time in this chapter, we meet the descendants of Caleb, the son of Hezron, through Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah. Part of that line was already given to us in verse 20.
The other Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, was not born with a place in Israel. One writer explains how he gained one.
By his birth, Caleb had no right of citizenship in Israel at all. He received that right among the people of Judah because of his faith, and he was brought into the family of Caleb the son of Hezron. You can see this in 1 Chronicles 2:49 and in the passages already cited in Joshua.
The same writer reads the name Caleb as standing for a quality, and finds it in others listed nearby — Hur among them.
The name Caleb carries the thought of "virtue" — moral energy. With a goal in view, it lets the believer get past obstacles. It separates him from every weight and from the sin that so easily entangles him. 2 Peter 1:5 says, "supplement your faith with virtue." Caleb is an example of this. Others of the same calibre as the son of Jephunneh belong with this name: Othniel, Achsah (1 Chronicles 4:13; 1 Chronicles 2:49); Hur (1 Chronicles 2:19, 50; 1 Chronicles 4:1, 4).
Hur is called the firstborn of Ephratah. That name belongs to a place as well as a person.
It seems the town was first called Ephrath (Genesis 35:16, 19; Genesis 48:7), and later Ephratah (Ruth 4:11; Psalm 132:6). Once it is called Bethlehem Ephratah, that is, the fruitful, for the ruler of Israel was to come from there. Micah 5:2; Luke 2:4, 15; John 7:42.
Another writer weighs which of the two names comes first:
The power of nature fails to uphold anything; it must be by the gift of grace and mercy. "Ephratah, Bethlehem" is man's order — fruitfulness before blessing (Genesis 35:19). "Bethlehem-Ephratah" (Micah 5:2) is God's way — blessing first, then fruitfulness.
Kiriath-jearim, the town named in this verse, is where the ark later rested. One writer ties both places in this verse to David's own history.
It seems clear that David, from his earliest days living with his father at Bethlehem, was marked by attachment to the ark, and that his bringing it to Zion was only the expression of that early love. At Ephratah they had only heard of the ark. They found it when David was king and set on bringing it to Zion. It lay in the fields of the wood, that is, in Kirjath-jearim, "city of the woods." The ark had been taken there after the Lord struck the men of Beth-shemesh for looking into it, when the Philistines sent it back. (1 Samuel 6:19-21.)
- Fragment. The record is patchy. Whole families could no longer name their head, so clan and town names stood in their place.
- Faith. Caleb had no birthright in Israel. Faith won him a place in Judah, and God wrote an outsider into Judah's own family record.
- Family. This line passes on a character, not only blood. Caleb, Hur and their relatives stand for moral energy that keeps a goal in view and pushes past obstacles.
- Fruitfulness. Ephratah is the older name of Bethlehem and means the fruitful. From there the ruler of Israel would come.
- Fulfilment. Kiriath-jearim, the town named here, sheltered the ark until David brought it to Zion. A dry list of names ends up pointing to the king and the ark.
Salma the father of Bethlehem, Hareph the father of Beth-gader.
This verse names two men and two towns: Salma with Bethlehem, Hareph with Beth-gader. These names belong to Caleb's line inside the tribe of Judah. The verse raises two questions. What does it mean to call a man a town's "father"? And why keep such scraps of family record at all?
Here the word is not about fatherhood in the usual sense.
In 1 Chronicles 2:51, 54 and 1 Chronicles 4:4, "father of Bethlehem" may mean "prince of Bethlehem." The town is Beit Lahm, six miles south of Jerusalem. It stands on a narrow ridge that runs out from the central range of hills.
The second half of the verse works the same way.
This seems to be a place near Bethlehem, and Hareph was its founder. 1 Chronicles 2:51.
This explains why the list reads so strangely.
Sometimes the genealogies of Chronicles hold very ancient names that we find nowhere else in the Old Testament. Many of the names are not people but clans or families. Other genealogies we might call geographic. With no other records to draw on, they list the names of tribes, districts and cities.
There was a reason the records took this shape.
The accuracy of the genealogies in Chronicles depends largely on the value the Jews placed on them during their captivity. Many among the people and among the priests could not prove their family line. They had no named head, yet people could still recognise them by the names of their families, their groups and their cities. Those names became, in effect, a "moral person," recognised as the stem of their ancestry (compare Ezra 1, and here 1 Chronicles 2:50, 54-55; 1 Chronicles 4:4).
Critics have used the broken state of these lists to attack the book.
Must we conclude from all this that the text of Chronicles is a human patchwork, put together at whim, and that the book therefore has no historical value? That is what the rationalists claim. But thank God, their reasoning always fails when it attacks His Word. No clear-sighted Christian will deny that the genealogies of Chronicles are made up of fragments picked up in a time of general confusion. Yet they are documents on which God sets His seal of approval.
Our verse sits in the third run of Caleb's descendants in this one chapter.
In verses 50-55 we meet the descendants of Caleb the son of Hezron for the third time in this chapter. The line runs through Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah. Part of this genealogy was already given to us in verse 20.
The name Caleb stands out in this chapter, and one writer draws a lesson from it.
This name carries the thought of "virtue" — that is, of moral energy. With a goal in view, that energy lets the believer get past obstacles. It separates him from every weight and from the sin that so easily entangles him.
The name Bethlehem itself points forward.
Bethlehem means "the House of Bread." It was a fitting birthplace, long afterward, for Him who as the "Bread of God" came down from heaven to give life to the world. Judah means "praise," and it is the royal tribe through which, in grace, the King was to come.
God had a reason for keeping this tribe through the captivity.
So God keeps the tribe the King was to come from until the appointed time, when Jesus is born in Bethlehem. This tribe is kept while the other ten tribes lie hidden in the dust of the earth. It holds the leading and only place in the books of Chronicles, and within it the family of David stands first.
- Father — "father of Bethlehem" means founder or prince of the town. Hareph stands the same way behind Beth-gader, a place near Bethlehem.
- Fragments — many names here are clans, districts and cities, not single men. After the captivity whole families could no longer prove their descent.
- Sealed — these gathered scraps are still documents on which God set His seal of approval, whatever critics say of them.
- Founders — the line runs through Caleb, a name tied to the moral energy that presses past obstacles toward its goal.
- Fulfilment — tribe, family and village were all kept safe for one appointed moment. In the House of Bread the King was born, the One who came down from heaven to give life to the world.
And Shobal the father of Kirjath-jearim had sons Haroeh, Hazi-Hammenuhoth.
This verse is one line in a long family register. Shobal is called the "father" of a town, not of a person, and his sons have names that sound like clans. Two questions follow. Why does Scripture keep such fragments? And how can a city have a father?
Caleb's line is not set out once and finished. One writer traces how this verse got here.
Caleb's genealogy is a striking example of this disorder. It shows how the genealogical registers survived only in fragments. Caleb (called Chelubai in verse 9 — not without purpose, I think) is the son of Hezron and the great-grandson of Judah... In verses 50-55 we meet the descendants of Caleb, the son of Hezron, for the third time in this chapter. They come through Hur, the firstborn of Ephratah, and part of his genealogy has already been given to us in verse 20.
The verse calls Shobal the father of a town. It then lists a group, "the Menuhoth", as though it were a son. The same writer ties this way of recording names to the people who came home from captivity.
In Chronicles the accuracy of the genealogies depends in large measure on the value the Jews placed on them during their captivity. The disorder these lists show matches the state of the remnant, as we find them in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Quite a number among the people and among the priesthood could not prove their genealogy. They had no family head to point to. Even so, the names of their families, groups, and cities could still identify them. In this way such a name became in essence a "moral person," recognized as the stem of their ancestry.
The same group reappears two verses later under a different spelling. Translators have handled it in different ways.
These are families descended from Shobal and Salma, the sons of Caleb (1 Chronicles 2:52, 54). The Hebrew is different in the two verses. In 1 Chronicles 2:52 the Revised Version has "Menuhoth." Mr. Darby treats "half of" as part of the proper name. So he gives Hazi-Hammenuhoth in 1 Chronicles 2:52, and Hazi-Hammanahethites in 1 Chronicles 2:54.
Shobal's branch is not the royal line. One writer asks why such branches appear at all, and recalls what the head of this line did for Israel.
The honoured line passed through Ram, but his natural relatives have a place in the archives of Judah. No doubt every one named here stood out for some quality or excellence, or for some special blessing given to him... Hur is the son of Caleb. This is the Hur who held up the hands of Moses along with Aaron, when Israel fought and overcame Amalek. He also shared with Aaron the care of the people when Moses went up the mountain (Exodus 17:12)... Is it not because of his connection with the ancestry of David? That line was always so choice with God that even the least link with it entitles a man to a place in these genealogies.
Kiriath-jearim is more than a place name. The ark — God's throne in Israel — later rested there. A boy from Ephratah, the district named in this same line, set his heart on recovering it.
Ephratah in that verse seems to stand for Bethlehem, and "the fields of the wood" for Kirjath-Jearim. Since this is so, the little verse sheds a flood of light on the matter. David was only a boy at Ephratah, long before he became famous, when he heard of the ark and all it had gone through. He saw that if God was to have His right place in Israel, the ark, which was His throne, must be recovered and properly set up again. As soon as he was settled on the throne he went to Kirjath-Jearim to bring it up to Zion.
Haroeh and the Menuhoth left no story behind them. Only the names remain.
It touches the soul deeply to go over a record of names that people forgot long ago. God has remembered every one of them, with every detail of their pathway through this world. Some day our names will be lost to mankind too. But God will forget neither us nor our ways.
- Fragment. The verse sits in the third, broken run of Caleb's descendants in this chapter, traced through Hur. The register came down in pieces, not as a tidy family tree.
- Family. When no one could trace a family head, families, clans and towns stood in as the recognised stem of a person's ancestry.
- City. The verse makes Shobal the father of a town, Kiriath-jearim. Even the spelling of the Menuhoth shifts by verse 54, so translations differ.
- Ark. That town later sheltered the ark. David, from the same Ephratah district named in this line, brought it up to Zion.
- Remembered. God keeps these storyless names because they link to David's line, and because He forgets no one. He will not forget our names either.
And the families of Kirjath-jearim were the Jithrites, and the Puthites, and the Shumathites, and the Mishraites; of them came the Zoreathites and the Eshtaolites.
This verse sits inside a long list of Judah's descendants. It names four clans from one small town, plus two groups that came out of them — so why does God keep a record like this, and what did these forgotten families ever do?
Many of the names in this part of the record are not persons but groups. One writer explains how a family or a town could stand in place of a missing ancestor when the records themselves had been damaged by exile.
In Chronicles, how accurate the family records are depends largely on how much the Jews valued them during their captivity. The disorder these records show matches the state of the remnant that we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Many of the people, and many of the priests, could not prove their line. They had no named head, yet they could still be known by the names of their families, groups and cities. Those names in this way became, in effect, a single "person" who stood as the stem their line grew from. The great disorder that came in also explains, at least in part, why very distant descendants of the head of a clan were counted as his sons.
The last two groups in the verse carry the names of towns. One dictionary entry ties the first of them, the Zorathites, both to a father in Judah's line and to the town of Zorah.
Family descended from Shobal, son of Judah: probably so called because of inhabiting Zorah. 1 Chr. 4:2. Called ZAREATHITES in 1 Chr. 2:53.
(Older translations read "Zareathites"; the ESV reads "Zorathites.")
Eshtaol, the other town in the verse, is not an empty name either.
Town in the lowlands of Judah, allotted to Dan. It was near to this town that Samson spent his early life, and there he was buried.
Kirjath-jearim, the town whose clans this verse lists, is not an unknown village. It mattered to Israel for one reason: the ark of God, the chest that marked His presence among them.
A city on the border of Judah and Benjamin. Its earlier name was Kirjath-baal. Joshua 15:60; Joshua 18:14. The ark was moved to the hill of the city and stayed there many years.
The first clan on the list, the Ithrites, turns up again in the roll of David's warriors. The connection made in this verse is what ties those two men to Judah.
This is the name given to Ira and Gareb, two of David's mighty men. They are described as among "the families of Kirjath-jearim," which links them with Judah. 2 Sam. 23:38. 1 Chr. 2:53; 1 Chr. 11:40.
So why did family lines matter so much in Israel? One writer sets Israel's care for them against the way people elsewhere prize their ancestry.
So if an Israelite was closely tied to his family, that was not vanity or pride, as it so often is among us. In Israel it was tied to the purpose of God... in Israel, God arranged everything. It was God's appointment, and the worthy men there were men who were worthy in God's sight — men who, by what their faith achieved, had won a place for Israel according to the will of God... So a family line held on to from the earliest times had a divine character in Israel that it has in no other country under the sun.
A list of four clan names can feel like dead text. One writer found it sobering instead.
There is something deeply sobering to the soul in being allowed to go over a record of names that people forgot long ago — yet God has remembered every one of them, along with every detail of their path through this world. One day our names too will be lost to mankind, but God will forget neither us nor our ways.
- Remembered as clans. After the exile many could not prove their descent. So families, groups and towns stood in for the missing head and were counted as the stem of the line.
- Remembered by place. The Zorathites and Eshtaolites carry the names of towns. Samson spent his early life near Eshtaol, and he was buried there.
- Remembered near the ark. These clans belonged to Kirjath-jearim. The ark of God, the sign of His presence, stayed on the hill of that city for years.
- Remembered for faith. From the first clan here came Ira and Gareb, two of David's mighty men. What made a name worth recording in Israel was not rank but what faith achieved.
- Remembered by God. Names the world has lost are still on God's page. One day ours will be lost too, and He will forget neither us nor our ways.
The sons of Salma Bethlehem, and the Netophathites. Atroth-Beth-Joab, and the Hazi-Hammana-hethites, the Zorites;
One line of names in Judah's register: the sons of Salma, starting with Bethlehem, then a string of clans and settlements. Why does Scripture keep such a list, and what is it building toward?
This verse sits in the last part of Judah's genealogy. It comes back once more to a name this chapter keeps repeating.
In verses 50-55 we meet the descendants of Caleb, the son of Hezron, for the third time in this chapter. They come through Hur, the first-born of Ephratah. Verse 20 has already given us part of that genealogy.
Salma is not said to have fathered a child called Bethlehem. The phrase carries a different sense.
In 1 Chr. 2:51, 54; 1 Chr. 4:4, 'father of Bethlehem' may signify 'prince of Bethlehem.'
That small town, named here in passing, carries both a history and a meaning.
David was anointed in the house of Jesse the Bethlehemite, so it seems this was the place of David's birth (1 Sam. 16:4; 1 Sam. 17:12, 15). That is why Luke 2:11 calls it the 'city of David.' It was also the birthplace of Jesus. It was "too little to be among the clans of Judah," and that suited His humiliation all the better. Bethlehem means 'house of bread.' It is a very fitting name for a place from which the Saviour should come as a man — He who was the living bread that came down from heaven.
The Netophathites, the Manahathites and the Zorites are groups, not single people. One commentator explains how a family or a town could take the place of a missing line of fathers.
Quite a number among the people and among the priesthood could not prove their genealogy. They had no heads on record. Even so, they could still be recognized by the names of their families, groups, and cities. Those names became, in effect, a "moral person," recognized as the stem of their ancestry (compare Ezra 1 and here 1 Chron. 2:50, 54-55; 1 Chron. 4:4).
Translators also differ over the phrase "half of the Manahathites."
Families descended from Shobal and Salma, sons of Caleb. 1 Chr. 2:52, 54. The Hebrew is different in the two verses. Mr. Darby treats 'half of' as part of the proper name, giving Hazi-Hammenuhoth in 1 Chr. 2:52, and Hazi-Hammanahethites in 1 Chr. 2:54.
Some say the gaps and repetitions in these lists make the book worthless as history. One commentator meets that charge head on.
Must we conclude from all this that the text of Chronicles is a human compilation, put together at random, and that the book has no historical value at all? That is what the rationalists claim. But thank God, their reason is always at fault when it attacks His Word. No informed Christian will deny that the genealogies of Chronicles are fragments gathered in a time of general confusion. Yet God sets His seal of approval on these documents.
Two men named Caleb stand behind this part of the list. One of them was not born an Israelite at all.
Caleb the son of Jephunneh was not originally one of the people of Judah. In Numbers 32:12 and Joshua 14:6, 14 he is called Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Genesis 36:11 shows us that Kenaz is an Edomite name. So at some point his family was brought into the tribes of Israel, just like other foreigners such as Jethro, Rahab, and Ruth, who became members of the people of God because of their faith. By birth, then, Caleb had no right of citizenship in Israel. His faith won him that right among Judah, and he was taken into the family of Caleb the son of Hezron, as 1 Chronicles 2:49 and the passages already quoted from Joshua show. The surviving fragments of the genealogy of Caleb the son of Hezron confirm the place God gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh. This substitution is one of the important points the Spirit of God calls our attention to here.
So why open a history of Israel with pages of names? Chronicles is tracing one line down to one Person.
In Chronicles the ruin is as clear as it is in the earlier books. But the point here is God's settled purpose to bring in His Only-begotten through a human line — a human line, yet His only begotten Son. In other words, His purpose stands out more in Chronicles. The genealogy proves this, and gives the key to the book.
- Purpose. The genealogy is the key to Chronicles: God bringing in His Son through a human line.
- Place. Verses 50-55 come back a third time to Caleb's line. This verse lists the families that came from Salma.
- Prince. "Father of Bethlehem" may mean prince of the town. The other names are clans and settlements that stand in for lost family records.
- Preserved. The lists are fragments gathered in a time of confusion, yet they are documents on which God set His seal.
- Promise. Faith brought Caleb, an outsider, into Judah. And little Bethlehem, the house of bread, is where the living bread came from.
and the families of the scribes who dwelt at Jabez the Tireathites, the Shimeathites, the Suchathites. These are the Kenites that came of Hammath, the father of the house of Rechab.
The genealogy of Judah ends by naming families of scribes at a town called Jabez. It then calls them Kenites — a people not born Israelites at all. Why does a family register of Judah end with outsiders? And what became of "the house of Rechab" named here?
The Kenites came out of Midian and tied themselves to Moses. One writer traces their path from there to the Rechabites named in this verse:
The history of this family, which came out of Midian and was allied to Moses, is full of interest. Jethro visited Israel in the desert and then went home to his own land. Moses asked Jethro's son Hobab to be eyes for the children of Israel, and to lead them as they camped in the wilderness. Hobab refused. Yet his sons, like Caleb, followed the people of God faithfully. They were the children of a stranger among the nations, and like Rahab they went up out of Jericho, the city of palm trees, to throw in their lot with Israel. They held to Judah for good, and in that they were like Ruth. And like Othniel, they allied themselves with the family of Caleb. The Rechabites came from the Kenites. When their history closes in the Bible, they are praised as true Nazarites in the middle of the ruin of Israel.
Jabez here is a town, not the man of the same name. No one today knows where it stood.
The city in which the various families of the scribes lived. 1 Chr. 2:55. Not identified.
A man named Jabez prays in the next chapter, and God answers him. One writer asks whether this town was named after that man:
Was that "border," which the Lord enlarged in answer to his prayer, named after him? If so, 1 Chronicles 2:55 supports the impression that he belonged to the family of the Kenites. They descended from Hobab, a Cushite, who came with Israel at Moses' own invitation, and Hobab's children lived among the people of Judah. A Kenite could not claim a share in Israel on the ground that he was an Israelite. Yet he could call on the God of Israel, and ask to be blessed with Israel.
Caleb's name runs through this chapter, and one writer sets the house of Rechab in that company:
To sum up, this chapter highlights the name of Caleb. That name carries the thought of "virtue" — that is, of moral energy. With a goal in view, this energy lets the believer get over obstacles. It separates him from every weight and from the sin that so easily entangles him… The same name links people of the same calibre as the son of Jephunneh: Othniel; Achsah; Hur; Jair (though Jair later lost everything his energy had first gained); the house of Rechab.
The house of Rechab shows up again in a man called Jehonadab. A Nazarite was a person set apart to God, and one writer shows what that meant for him:
Jehonadab was of the race of the Kenites, who had entered into Canaan with Israel. They split into several branches. The smallest lived far to the north at Kedesh in Naphtali. The strongest lived in the desert of Judah, south of Arad. A third branch divided into several families near Jabez, a town that belonged to Judah… He had no link with the evil around him. He lived by complete separation to God, as a true Nazarite. He could not teach these principles in the corrupt world around him, so he had at least taught them in his family and in his house. The circle of his testimony was small… but it was still a testimony, and God approved it.
Another writer points to what that family later received:
Notice the special reward granted to the house of Rechab for obeying their father.
One writer sees God's own choice behind the outsiders in these lists:
How sovereign the grace which will not overlook the outcast Gentile! … God would not be limited to Israel when it was a question of showing grace; He was as to law, but even under the old covenant, which was special to Israel, He chooses from among the Gentiles whom He will bless.
- Outsiders. The Kenites came out of Midian and tied themselves to Moses. They had no birthright in Israel. They chose to throw in their lot with God's people and held to Judah.
- Welcomed. A Kenite could not claim a share in Israel by birth. He could still call on the God of Israel and ask to be blessed with Israel. God answered Jabez, who may well have been a Kenite.
- Enrolled. Grace put them in the register beside Caleb, among names marked by moral energy that gets over obstacles.
- Separated. Their line ran on to Jehonadab. He kept complete separation to God, and taught it in his own house when he could teach it nowhere else.
- Rewarded. God approved that small circle of testimony. Their story ends with a special reward for obeying their father.