Ruth 4:20

And Amminadab begat Nahshon,.... The prince of the tribe of Judah, as the Targum adds; and so he was when the Israelites were come out of Egypt, and were in the wilderness at the time of the

Rth 4:20 And Amminadab begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon,Ver. 20. Nahshon.] Prince of Judah, the first standard.

(20) Nahshon was the prince of the children of Judah in the wilderness. (See Numbers 1:7, &c). Salmon—Heb., Salmah, though called Salmon in the next verse. In 1 Chronicles 2:11 he is called Salma. Salmon may very probably have been one of the two spies sent to Jericho, who having been sheltered by Rahab, had repaid her kindness by marrying her. It has been observed above that the smallness of the number of the generations hardly suits the long period of years here implied, and on the whole we are disposed to believe that some links of the chain have been dropped, and if so, then doubtless in the period before Boaz. Thus we may suppose that we have here the distinguished names, others of less note being passed over. Unless this is done we are forced to increase largely the average length of a generation, and suppose that most of these generations were children of their fathers’ old age. We know from 1 Kings 6:1 that from the Exodus to the fourth year of Solomon was 480 years. If we deduct from this forty years for the wanderings in the desert, then, seeing that David died at the age of seventy, we have for the period from the entrance into Canaan to the birth of David, 480-40-70-4 = 366 years. But if Rahab bears Boaz to Salmon only a few years after the beginning of this period, we have to cover nearly 366 years with three generations, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, which entails upon us the conclusion that each of the above three begat the specified son at the age of over a hundred, and that Salmon was also well advanced in years at his marriage. This, however, seems hardly credible, and the theory that one or two generations have dropt from the list is, at any rate, reasonable.

Verse 20. Amminadab begat Nahshon] The Targum adds, "And Nahshon was chief of the house of his father in the tribe of Judah." Nahshon begat Salmon] In the Hebrew it is שלמה Salmah, which Houbigant thinks was an error of an ancient scribe, before any final letters were acknowledged in the Hebrew alphabet: for then the word would be written שלמון Salmon, which a scribe, after final letters were admitted, might mistake for שלמה Salmah, and so write it, instead of שלמון Salmon, the ו vau and ן final nun in conjunction (ון) bearing some resemblance to . The Targum calls him "Salmah the Just; he was the Salmah of Beth-lehem and Netopha, whose sons abolished the watches which Jeroboam set over the highways; and their works and the works of their father were good in Netopha."

20. Nahshon] i.e. serpent, a name belonging to the early period. This Nahshon son of Amminadab was a prince of Judah (Numbers 1:7; Numbers 2:3; Numbers 10:14) and a contemporary of Moses and Aaron (Exodus 6:23), according to P; here he is made the grandfather of Boaz, obviously by omitting a good many links. Salmon] From Salmah (1 Chronicles 2:11 Salma’) or Salmon (St Matthew 1:4 f., St Luke 3:32) to Boaz is a long step, if the former is the same as ‘Salma the father of Beth-lehem’ 1 Chronicles 2:51. In St Matthew 1:5 Salmon’s wife was Rahab, obviously an anachronism.

20. Nahshon — Prince or chief captain of the tribe of Judah during the journeys of the wilderness, (Numbers 2:3,) and whose offering to the Lord among other tribe-princes is described at Numbers 7:12-17.