Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/66

 copious lists of the tribes of Judah, Levi, and Benjamin, only the genealogies of single prominent families of these tribes are enumerated. In Judah, little more is given than the families descended from Pharez, 1 Chron 2:5-4:20, and a few notices of the family of Shelah; of Levi, none are noticed but the succession of generations in the high-priestly line of Aaron, some descendants of Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, and the three Levites, Heman, Asaph, and Ethan, set over the service of song; while of Benjamin we have only the genealogies of three families, and of the family of Saul, which dwelt at Gibeon. But the incompleteness of these registers comes still more prominently into view when we turn our attention to the extent of the genealogical lists, and see that only in the cases of the royal house of David and the high-priestly line of Eleazar do the genealogies reach to the Babylonian exile, and a few generations beyond that point; while all the others contain the succession of generations for only short periods. Then, again, in regard to their plan and execution, these genealogies are not only unsymmetrical in the highest degree, but they are in many cases fragmentary. In the tribe of Judah, besides the descendants of David, 1 Chron 3, two quite independent genealogies of the families of Judah are given, in 1 Chron 2 and 1 Chron 4:1-23. The same is the case with the two genealogies of the Levites, the lists in 1 Chron 6 differing from those in 1 Chr 5:27-41 surprisingly, in 1Ch 6:16, 1Ch 6:20, 1Ch 6:43, 1Ch 6:62, Levi's eldest son being called Gershom, while in 1Ch 6:1 and 1Ch 23:6, and in the Pentateuch, he is called Gershon. Besides this, there is in 1 Chron 6:35-38 a fragment containing the names of some of Aaron's descendants, who had been already completely enumerated till the Babylonian exile in 1 Chr 5:29-41. In the genealogies of Benjamin, too, the family of Saul is twice entered, viz., in 1Ch 8:29-40 and in 1Ch 9:35-44. The genealogies of the remaining tribes are throughout defective in the highest degree. Some consist merely of an enumeration of a number of heads of houses or families, with mention of their