Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 2-4.

Today’s passage consists of more genealogies.  One thing we learn about the genealogies in the Old Testament is that we need to be careful about interpreting the number of generations between “father” and “son”.  This is not to dismiss these genealogies.  For example, it tells us that Achar (an alternate spelling of Achan) was the son of Kami, the son of Judah.  Assuming this is the Achan mentioned in the Book of Joshua, which is probable, we know he was more generations from Judah than his grandson.  This genealogy also tells us that Caleb was Judah’s great grandson, but we know that Caleb was more generations removed from Judah than that.  Now, the key here is that we know that the Hebrew words used to indicate that Caleb was the  son of Hezron and that Achar was the son of Karmi, can also just mean that they are descended from them.  We need to remember that Ancient Hebrew had very few words when compared to modern languages.  But even in modern English, we sometimes use the expression “child of” to indicate that someone descended from that person rather than to indicate that they are the following generation.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.