of Izrahiah; Michael, and Obadiah, and Joel, Isshiah, five: all of them chief men. 4And with them, by their generations, after their fathers' houses, were bands of the host for war, six and thirty thousand: for they had many wives and sons. 5And their brethren among all the families of Issachar, mighty men of valour, reckoned in all by genealogy, were fourscore and seven thousand.
3. five] i.e. reckoning the four grandsons as sons.
4. by their generations] i.e. according to descent. Each head commanded men that were his kinsfolk.
5. fourscore and seven thousand] In Num. ii. 6 Issachar is reckoned at 54,400, and in Num. xxvi. 25 at 64,300.
6—12. The Genealogy of Zebulun.
6—12. According to the existing text these verses are a genealogy of Benjamin; but, as such, they present most serious difficulties. Notice (1) that the customary "sons of" is lacking in the Heb. text before Benjamin: (2) that the sons of Benjamin here number three, whereas in Num. xxvi. 38, 39, they are five (five also in 1 Chr. viii. 2!), and in Gen. xlii. 21 ten; and further that one of the sons here mentioned, Jediael, is nowhere else referred to as a Benjamite: (3) that the sons of Bela (ver. 7) are entirely different in viii. 3: and (4) that in general the names in the list (with only three certain exceptions and two of them place-names) are not elsewhere found in lists of Benjamite names—a startling fact. (5) Finally and most important of all, a genealogy of Benjamin is given in ch. viii., exactly where we might expect to find it according to the order in which the Chronicler describes the tribes.
The first of these points could be (and has usually been) explained by the elision of some letters; for the words "the sons of" (Benê) in Heb. writing most closely resemble "Ben" the first syllable of Benjamin. For a few other minor difficulties tentative suggestions have been put forward, but are very unsatisfying, whilst for most of the features noted above, and especially for the most important of them, no proper explanation can be given on the supposition that the list really is a genealogy of Benjamin. It is therefore most probable that the view urged by Curtis, ad loc., should be adopted. He finds in these verses the genealogy of Zebulun, the absence of which otherwise is a striking feature of the genealogies in these chapters. The letters which are now taken to be the first part of the word Benjamin should be read Benê (i.e. the sons of), and the following letters are a corruption of Zebulun, which was originally followed by the names of Zebulun's three sons, Sered and Elon and Jahleel, as given in Gen. xlvi. 14. The changes involved by this suggestion may seem violent in English, but they are by no means so in the Heb., and moreover it must be understood that they all follow
