nephews, or possibly great-grandsons. The standpoint of a genealogical compiler of a tribe at any period seems to have been to take the number of greater tribal houses (cf. the phrase "the house of a father"1 used for such in Num. xxv. 14, A. V. mar.) existing de facto at the time; and to reckon each head of such house as the "son" of the tribal patriarch; but how far each might in fact be distant from him in the line of descent remains often doubtful. Thus the "sons of Gilead," each with his "family," in Num. xxvi. 30-32, may include more remote relationships. The lines of descent here specially concerned are two, and (I.) JUDAH Pharez (by Tamar) (II.) JOSEPH the alliance which they contracted had important consequences. The juniority of Joseph is here indicated by his being placed in a lower line, and the relation (in time) of Pharez to Judah, as virtually that of a grandson, by the longer line between them and the short line. across it. Somewhat simiZelophehad lar is the time relation of Machir Hezron Abiah (daur.) Gilead Segub Hepher Segub to Hezron, who mar ried Abiah when he was sixty years old, after two earlier wives, one being then deceased. Thus Jair is virtually in the sixth generation from Judah. The line of Judah, as regards the completeness of successive links, is here the best attested of the two, being found partly in Gen. xlvi. 12; see also xxxviii. 27-30; Num. xxvi. 1See the standing formula in Numbers "by their generations, after their families, by the house of their fathers"; see Num. i. sæpius; in Num. xxvi. the standing formula is shorter, the phrase of the text occurs, however, in verse 2. * See the articles "Becher" and "Beriah," Dict. of Bible (2d ed.), i., as examples of such uncertainty. VOL. LV. No. 217. 3 19-21, more fully in Ruth iv. 18, and 1 Chron. ii. 3 foll. Notice also that in the cases of Pharez and Segub, the maternity is known as well as the father's side. (See especially, for particular points, 1 Chron. ii. 18, 19, 21, 24.) The line of Manasseh from Joseph is found in Num. xxvi. 29-33, and 1 Chron. vii. 14-19, as also allusively in Josh. xvii. 1–3. But no one, I think, can read the account in 1 Chron. vii. without a sense of confusion and incompleteness; as a parallel to which may be adduced the confused state of the companion pedigree from Ephraim in the same chapter, verse 20 foll., the entanglement arising from which is discussed under SHUTHELAH in the Bible Dictionary.1 Nor is that from Benjamin in a much more hopeful state, in which "Huppim and Shuppim" (whose sister appears to have been the wife of Machir ben-Manasseh) alternate as the sons (under somewhat varied forms of names) of Benjamin in Gen. xlvi. 21; Num. xxvi. 39, and as his greatgrandsons in 1 Chron. vii. 12; while in the next chapter (viii. 1-5) they appear as his grandsons! Amidst such confusion it is difficult to formulate a conjecture which can carry preponderant probability. Before I venture one, I will mention the chief doubts which beset this Manassite pedigree in 1 Chron. vii. It is doubtful whether (1) the sons of Manasseh named in verse 14 were of one mother or of two; (2) whether the "wife" whom one of these sons, viz. Machir, "took of Huppim and Shuppim" in verse 152 (whose own place in their pedigree is most doubtful, as shown above) was their sister or any other relative; (3) whether the person "whose sister's 1 1st ed., iii. p. 1304. 2 A further doubt is started by our finding that in the Peshito Syriac version of 1 Chron. vii. 15 this princess, Mââcâh, is made to be not Machir's wife, but his mother. 3 The only thing certain is, that it was a male; the pron. suffix to “sister" being sing, masc., as shown in R. V. mar. name was Maacah" was Machir or Gilead; (4) It is doubtful how the gap which follows evidently next after that last statement, before " ... and the name of the second was Zelophehad"-for there is no "first" to lead up to and explain that "second"-should be filled up. More singular than all is the indirect way in which the name of "Gilead" is brought in-one quite different from any of the usual formulations. We are told that Manasseh's concubine "bare Machir the father of Gilead," and at the end of verse 17, after a number of sons, grandsons, etc., apparently of Machir, have been enumerated, the chroni cler informs us, "These were the sons of Gilead." Of course rhetorically this, by way of magnifying Gilead as the real hero of the house, is very effective. But who would suspect rhetoric to lurk among the dry twigs of a family-tree? This, at any rate, shows us the measure of the sense to be attached to the word "sons" in this record of family names, with which compare in Judges xi. 1, “Gilead begat Jephthah." Nor is the mass of doubt relieved appreciably when we turn to Num. xxvi. 29-33. There we find the clear descent in the first three links, as in First Chronicles, "Manasseh, Machir, Gilead." But next, Asriel, who in First Chronicles (as Ashriel) is the son of Manasseh, appears as the third among six, all "sons of Gilead," of whom the last is Hepher, who has one son Zelophehad, who, as in I Chron. vii., has daughters only. Take next the statements of Josh. xvii. 1-4, and there we find the hero of the house. is not Gilead, but Machir-"because he was a man of war, therefore he had Gilead and Bashan" (ver. 1); there too the same six heads of families, all given in Numbers as sons of Gilead' are "the male children of Manasseh ben-Joseph"-all set down, that is, to the first head of the tribe (ver. 2). In the context, however (ver. 3), this is explained 1 Cf. also xxvii. 1 and xxxvi. 1. by tracing the descent of Zelophehad through Hepher, just as in Numbers, with the names of his daughters following, as there. Joshua, in fact, repeats Numbers, but glorifies Machir; while neither relieves the doubts left open by 1 Chron. vii. It is, further, remarkable that only in this passage of the chronicler do we find such a phrase as whose name was," and "the name of the second was . . .," and again "she called his name "I mean, without any special reason for the name being added. On the contrary, very emphatic, and even pathetic, are the reasons given for the names of Jabez (1 Chron. iv. 9) and of Beriah (1 Chron. vii. 22). Everywhere else we have merely the fact of the person being called so-and-so, without the fact of "the name " being thus objectively presented. The names so objected are nearly all significant in Hebrew, and probably all in that or some cognate language. Most curiously so is Zelophehad, evidently a compound, and probably meaning, "Shadow of [perhaps in the sense of "shelter from"] terror"; but what were the reasons for so singular a designation is a widely open question. It is of course easy to imagine that some crisis of alarm in the fortunes of a young settlement far from the supports of home may have called it forth. But names once given tend to recur in a family line; as that of Jair in this very family (Num. xxxii. 41; Judg. x. 3); and Benjamin appears in 1 Chron. vii. 6, 10 with a grandson of his own name. I suggest then that, in 1 Chron. vii. 15, "The name of the second was Zelophehad," the word "the second" (hashênî) has somehow got into the wrong place, and that what the text, when entire, conveyed, was the fact that there was a "second" of the name, with probably an intervening link or links between the two, and that this second was the father of the five daughters on whose account the question of inheritance 1See Isa. iv. 6; xxv. 4; xxxii. 2; Jer. xlviii. 45; Ps. xvii. 8, et al. was raised. Assuming this, we should have seven links between Joseph and these heiresses, i.e., they would be the eighth in descent from him. This supposed hiatus in, or confusion of, the text of 1 Chron. vii. 15, which has given us one Zelophehad instead of two, may be compared with the fact that the two Calebs, between whom a generation intervened, are confounded in ii. 49. The first Caleb (or Chelubai) is (1 Chron. ii. 9, 18) a son of the Hezron who became late in life the father Thus we should have two parallel lines of con of Segub. (I.) JUDAH Abiah Hezron (sister of Gilead) Cal Caleb (1) Segub Hur Jair Caleb (2) Uri Bezaleel (II.) JOSEPH Hepher Zelophehad (1) Unknown Zelophehad (2) temporaneous descent, which we may regard as complete and as each covering about the same number of years. Bezaleel can hardly have been younger than twentyfive years of age, when at Sinai he took a leading share in the construction of the Tabernacle. If Zelophehad (2) was about the same age, or even twenty years younger, he might easily have had five daughters of whom the elder ones would be marriageable by the SihonOg conquest. But if we make them the daughters of Zelophehad (1), they would certainly then be aged women, and have been married long before. They expressly state, "Our father died in the wilderness" but "not . . . in the company of Korah" (Num. xxvii. 3). He therefore came forth out of Egypt. We may assume that the elder Zelophehad (1) had returned from the land of Gilead to Egypt, perhaps under the Amorite pressure. Disappear Five daughters 1Of course it is open to any one to suggest that the first Caleb may also have had a daughter named Achsah. But probability seems in favor of the heiress of Judg. i. 12-15 (cf. Josh. xv. 16, 17) being intended. |