1 Chronicles 1:23

[See comments on 1 Chronicles 1:5]

And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan. No JFB commentary on this verse.

THE SONS OF SHEM, OR THE SEMITES (1 Chronicles 1:17-23). (17) Blam.—The Elamtum of the Assyrian inscription, the classic Susiana, a mountainous land eastward of Babylonia, to which it was subject in the days of Abraham (Genesis 14). The names Assurϋ, Elamϋ, Kassϋ, and Accadϋ occur together in an old Assyrian list of nations. Κlama, from which the Assyrian and Hebrew names are derived, is Accadian. The native designation was Ansan. The Sargonide kings of Assyria had frequent wars with Elam. Asshur.—Assyria proper, i.e., a district on the Tigris, about twenty-five miles long, between the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh parallels of latitude. Asshur was the name of its older capital and tutelar god. The Semitic Assyrians appear to have been settled at Asshur as early as the nineteenth century B.C. They were emigrants from Babylonia (Genesis 10:11). The original name was A-usar, “water-meadow.” Arphaxad apparently means Babylonia, or, at least, includes it. Babylonian monarchs styled themselves “King of the Four Quarters” (of heaven); and Arphaxaa may perhaps mean land of the four quarters or sides, and be derived from the Assyrian arba-kisβdi “four sides” (Friedrich Delitzsch). More probably it is Arph-chesed, “boundary of Chaldea.” Lud, usually identified with the Lydians (Assyrian Luddi), perhaps their original home in Armenia. The name has also been compared with Rutennu, the Egyptian name of the Syrians (I and r being confused in Egyptian). But comp. Ezekiel 27:10; Ezekiel 30:5. Aram.—The high land—that is, eastern and western Syria, extending from the Tigris to the Great Sea. The name is constantly used for the Arameans, or Syrians. Uz.—An Arab tribe, called Hβsu by Esarhaddon, who reduced them. Perhaps, however, Uz (Heb., Ϋη), is the Assyrian Uηηa, a district on the Orontes, mentioned by Shalmaneser II. (B.C. 860-825). Job lived in the “land of Uz.” The remaining names appear to be also those of Arab tribes, who must have lived northward in the direction of Aram; these are called sons of Aram in Genesis 10 Hul is the Assyrian Hϋlξ’a, which formed a part of the mountain land of Kasiar or Mash (Inscription of Assurnβηirpal, B.C. 885-860). For Meshech Genesis 10 has Mash, which is compared with Mount Masius, near Nisibin. (So the Syriac and some Heb. MSS.) (18) Eber.—The land on the other side (Gr., ἡπέραν) Perζa. Here the land beyond the Euphrates is meant, from which “Abraham, the Hebrew” (i.e., Eberite), migrated. (19) Two sons.—This indicates the ancient consciousness that the Hebrew and Arabian peoples were akin. The earth was divided.—Or, divided itself. (Comp. Deuteronomy 32:7-9.) The words probably refer to a split in the population of Mesopotamia. (20) Joktan begat Almodad.—The Joktanite tribes lived along the coast of Hadhramaut (Hazarmaveth) and Yemen, in southern Arabia. The tribes of Yemen call their ancestor Qahtβn (= Joktan). The names in 1 Chronicles 1:20-21, are all explicable from Arabic sources. (22) Ebal.—Genesis 10:28. Obal, where, however, the LXX. read Εὐάλ (Ebal). The different spelling is due to the common confusion in MSS. of the Hebrew letters w and y. Both Ebal and Abimael are unknown.

Verse 23. And Ophir] "Whence gold is brought." And Havilah; "whence pearls are brought." - T.

5–23. The “Genealogy” of the Nations The table which follows is taken from Genesis 10:2-29. In the A.V. several variations between Gen. and Chron. occur in the spelling of proper names. In the R.V. the spelling has been made uniform. The table is geographical rather than ethnological, i.e. neighbouring nations are regarded as having the same descent. The world, as known to the writer, is divided into three zones, of which the Northern is assigned to the Sons of Japheth (5–7), the Southern to the Sons of Ham (8–16), and the Central to the Sons of Shem (17–23). Had the arrangement been according to descent the Semitic Zidonians and the (probably Mongoloid) Hittites would not have been equally described as the offspring of Ham (cp. Sayce, Higher Criticism and the Monuments, p. 122). It must be noticed, moreover, that the passage contains a general table with two appendices. The General Table is derived from the so-called “Priestly” narrative (PC) of the Hexateuch, while the appendices have been inserted by a Redactor from an earlier narrative, the “Prophetical” (J) (cp. Driver, Introduction, p. 13). Thus we get the following scheme:— Ch 1:5-9. PC (General Table of the descendants of Japheth and Ham).–16. J (Appendix to the descendants of Ham).. PC (General Table of the descendants of Shem).–23. J (Appendix to the descendants of Shem). It must be further noted that though the Priestly source is assigned in its main stock by critics to “the exilic or early post-exilic period,” some elements in it belong to pre-exilic times. This table of the nations in particular agrees with the state of the world as referred to by Ezekiel, and is probably to be assigned to a date anterior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. (Sayce in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, i. 347, suggests that the table is as early as the period of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Egyptian dynasties, when Palestine was under Egyptian suzerainty.)