1 Chronicles 7:1-11

Now the Sons of Issachar were, Tola, and Puah, Jaahub, and Shimrom, four.

Statistics

1. Statistics play an important part in Chronicles and in the Old Testament generally.

(1) Genealogies and other lists of names.

(2) Specifications of subscription lists for the Tabernacle and for Solomon’s temple.

(3) Census returns and statements as to the number of armies and of the divisions of which they were composed.

2. Biblical statistics are examples in accuracy and thoroughness of information, and recognitions of the more obscure and prosaic manifestations of the higher life. In these and other ways the Bible gives an anticipatory sanction to the exact sciences.

3. Statistics are the only form in which many acts of service can be recognised and recorded. The missionary report can only tell the story of a few striking conversions; it may give the history of the exceptional self-denial in one or two of its subscriptions; for the rest we must be content with tables and subscription-lists.

4. Our chronicler’s interest in statistics lays healthy emphasis on the practical character of religion. There is a danger of identifying spiritual force with literary and rhetorical gifts; to recognise the religious value of statistics is the most forcible protest against such identification. The supreme service of the Church in any age is its influence on its own generation, by which it moulds the generation immediately following. That influence can only be estimated by a careful study of all possible information and especially of statistics.

5. The lists in Chronicles are few and meagre compared to the records of Greenwich Observatory or the volumes which contain the data of biology and sociology; but the chronicler becomes, in a certain sense, the forerunner of Darwin, Spencer, and Galton. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)