Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

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OK, this passage is a list of genealogies.  I struggle with finding something for me to approach in most of the genealogies in the Bible.  I am going to start with something I never noticed before.  The passage lists that Ham, the son of Noah, had two descendants named Sheba and Dedan.  Then a little later it tells us that Abraham had two grandson with those same names (these were from Abraham’s concubine Keturah).  Another thing I find interesting is that after listing Esau’s son and some of his grandsons, the passage lists the descendants of Seir.  We are never told who Seir’s ancestors were.  What we know is that Mount Seir, which was the center of the land lived in by Esau’s descendants, we named after Seir.  Further, we are given to understand elsewhere that the descendants of Seir were the people occupying the land which became Edom when Esau first lived there.  I believe that Seir and his descendants are listed here because the descendants of Esau and the descendants of Seir assimilated each other to become the Edomites, rather than the descendants of Esau displacing and replacing the descendants of Seir.

Finally, I want to look at one last name: Timna.  The name Timna appears three times in this passage.  The first time it refers to either a daughter-in-law of Esau, or a grandson of Esau (the Hebrew manuscripts we have of 1 Chronicles does not have the words “and of” in verse 36.  That comes from the Septuagint which may have translated from Hebrew manuscripts which were lost long ago).  The next time Timna appears in verse 39 it refers to a daughter of Seir (actually, the wording could mean she was a more distant descendant of Seir).  Finally in verse 51 it refers to Timna as one of the chiefs of Edom.  If the first reference refers to a daughter-in-law of Esau, then it probably refers to the same person as the second reference.  That would actually make sense and would explain why the descendants of Esau merged with the descendants of Seir.  If all three references to someone named Timna are referring to the same person, it tells us something interesting about the role of women in that area.  If the Timna who was a chief of the Edomites was Esau’s daughter-in-law, it suggests a society where women could rise to roles of authority.  Combining that with Deborah as mentioned in the Book of Judges would throw doubt on our usual understanding of the male-domination of that society.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

I have repeatedly written that I struggle with reading and commenting on the passages which are composed of genealogies, such as today’s.  When I do so, I am not complaining, I am just sharing something about the way my mind works.  In any case, As I was reading today I thought about two men about whom the passage references something the writer thought noteworthy.  The first is Nimrod, the son of Cush, and grandson of Ham.  The passage tells us that Nimrod became a mighty warrior and then says nothing more about him.  The second one is Peleg, about whom the passage says that he had that name because in his time the earth was divided.  The passage then proceeds to trace the descendants of Peleg’s brother, Joktan.  Joktan was the ancestor of Abraham, and thus of the Israelites.  I don’t know why these facts are mentioned about these men.  Perhaps they were mentioned in legends or other accounts and the writer included these facts in order to tie this with something its readers knew from other sources.  Then towards the end of this passage it speaks of the kings of Edom who reigned before any Israelite king reigned.  The passage lists eight kings of Edom, followed by eleven men whom it says were the chiefs of Edom.  Again, I am not sure why these men are listed here.  Perhaps they are listed to demonstrate that Edom became a kingdom long before Israel did.  I am not sure what any of that means, but I do believe there is value in trying to understand why these things are written.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

I have previously written about how hard it is for me to find something to write about passages which, like today’s, primarily consist of a list of genealogies.  Today is no exception.  However, I found something interesting in these genealogies.  In verse nine it says that Raamah, the grandson of Ham, great grandson of Noah, had two sons, named Sheba and Dedan.  Later, in verse thirty-two, it says that Jokshan, Abraham’s son by Keturah, had two sons, also named Sheba and Dedan.  What makes this interesting is that these genealogies were designed to tell the Israelites how the various nations were related to them.  So, what does the fact that this passage indicates that both Ham and Abraham had grandsons named Sheba and Dedan mean?  I can imagine a couple of reasons for these two listings for sons by those names.  First, both Raamah and Jokshan gave their sons those names and it is mere coincidence that those names coincide with the names of places.  Second, the descendants of Jokshan settled among the descendants of Raamah and intermarried with them.  I think this latter explanation is most likely.  What I do not know, and don’t really think important, is whether either Raamah or Jokshan (or both) actually named their sons Sheba and Dedan, or if the writer of this passage merely meant to record that the peoples of those lands were descended from Raamah and Jokshan.  Overall, we learn from this passage that the people of every nation are related to us, some more closely, others more distantly, but they are part of our family.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

As I read this genealogy I was reminded of the “curse of Ham”, which Noah supposedly put on the descendants of Ham because Ham had seen him naked and told his brothers.  The “curse of Ham” was used to justify slavery in the antebellum South.  The primary problem with the “curse of Ham” is that Noah only cursed Ham’s son, Canaan (and through Canaan, his descendants), rather than all of Ham’s descendants (and the Africans who were enslaved in the antebellum South were not descendants of Canaan according to any Biblical genealogy).  However, that is not why I was reminded of it.  What struck me is that the descendants sons of Japheth (Magog, Gomer, Javan, Meshek, and Tubal) play a central role as the antagonists to God’s people in the Apocalyptic prophecies of the Bible (Ezekiel, Revelation, Daniel).  So, throughout the history of ancient Israel, their antagonists were descendants of Ham (according to this table of nations), mostly descendants of Canaan.  Yet, in the Apocalyptic prophecies of the Bible, the antagonists to God’s people will be descendants of Japheth.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

I have written this before, but I struggle with writing anything about the passages of genealogies.  For the most part, genealogies just do not interest me very much.  Sometimes I get fascinated by looking at my own in order to see how I may be related to someone else, or even how two other people are related to each other.  Which brings us to what I think is the main point of this genealogy being here: to show the people of Israel how they were related to the peoples living around them.  To a degree, this served to explain the similarities and differences between the peoples around the Israelites: “These people are very different from you because their ancestors separated from your ancestors a long time ago, while these people are not as different from you because they shared a common ancestor with you more recently.”  Now I want to write about the first thing which stood out to me today.  The writer tells us that Peleg was named that because in his time the earth was divided.   Some sources I have found say that the Hebrew word translated as “earth” can also be translated as “nations”.    Those sources, and some others, also suggest that perhaps the passage means that the division of languages which occurred at the Tower of Babel happened during Peleg’s lifetime.  However, that raises the question as to why it is important that the earth was divided in Peleg’s lifetime?  Wouldn’t that have also been his brother Joktan’s lifetime? And at least some of the other people mentioned here?  The answer to that question is that Peleg was Abraham’s ancestor.  Tracking back the ancestors of the Israelites, it was in Peleg’s time that the “earth” was divided.  So, those whose common ancestor was before Peleg might not be any more different from each other than anybody whose common ancestor was contemporary with Peleg.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Chronicles 1.

I have little to write about today’s passage.  I do find it interesting that this passage lists the sons of Abraham as Ishmael and Isaac, but then it lists the sons of Keturah, Abraham’s concubine.  So, why is it phrased this way?  Perhaps because, Ishmael is Abraham’s eldest son and Isaac is the son of God’s promise to Abraham, while Keturah’s children were all born after the death of Sarah (or, at least, that is the way that the Genesis account reads).

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

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 1.

I have stated before that genealogical lists like those in today’s passage do very little for me.  So, when I come to such passages I need to approach them a bit differently.  I spent more time than usual looking at the translators’ footnotes.  My first comment regards a large number of comments which result from the fact that Ancient Hebrew did not contain vowels as we understand them today.  This results in different manuscripts indicating the vowels differently, which means some of the names look different when transliterated to English (a similar thing sometimes happens today with Arabic names for different reasons, so that Muammar Gaddafi and Moamar Khadifi refer to the same person).  More interesting, the translators decided to introduce the phrase, “The sons of Noah were,” in front of the names of Noah’s three sons (which we know from other sources).  What makes this interesting is that all of the names before that are one generation followed by the next.  So, in the Hebrew there is no clue that Shem is not the father of Ham, who is not the father of Japheth until the verses where it starts to list each of their descendants.  Finally, by comparing to the NIV translator notes we discover that the translators made judgement calls as to whether or not to translate certain words/phrases as “father of” or “ancestor of” and “son of” or “descendant of”.

Which reinforces something I first became aware of some years back.  We must be careful about reaching conclusions about what a passage means for us based on the connotations of the English word the translators selected.  I first became aware of this when a good friend, whose Biblical understanding I generally respected, supported their understanding of Bible verse on the connotations of a word used by the King James Version which I knew to have not applied when the KJV translation was made.  My point here is that, since I have never learned to read Hebrew or Greek, I must look at multiple translations when I want to do a deep dive into what a particular passage means.  There are many places in the Bible (and in other translated documents) where the translator needed to make a judgement call on what words to use in the translation.