1 Chronicles 8 - Introduction

VIII.

The narrative returns to the tribe of Benjamin. The present register is quite different from that preserved in 1 Chronicles 7:6, which, as we have seen, is an extract from a document drawn up for military purposes. Apparently based on a topographical register, this new list agrees better than the other with the data of the Pentateuch (Genesis 46; Numbers 26), allowance being made for the mistakes of generations of copyists. The chronicler may well have thought the short section of 1 Chronicles 7 too meagre as an account of a tribe which had furnished the first royal house, and had afterwards inseparably linked its fortunes with those of the legitimate dynasty. Here, therefore, he supplements his former notice. Perhaps, also, he returns to Benjamin by way of introduction to the royal genealogy with which the section concludes. In snort, he begins, as his manner is, at the beginning; and having to tell of Saul, starts from the tribal patriarch to whom the house of Saul traced back its long descent.