1 Chronicleschapter 5
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Speaks with:1 Chronicles 5×52 Kings 15×4Numbers 32×3Genesis 25×2Joshua 13×22 Kings 14×2
Summary
Chapter summary
The tribes east of the Jordan. Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh. The Chronicler pauses over Reuben's forfeited birthright, given to Joseph's sons, while noting that the ruler came out of Judah. Then a battle report that doubles as a sermon: against the Hagrites they prevailed because 'they cried to God in the battle, and he was entreated of them, because they put their trust in him.' The same tribes are last seen going the other way. They trespassed against the God of their fathers and went after the gods of the peoples of the land, and God stirred up the kings of Assyria to carry them away. Trust and trespass, with the exile between them.
Context
History · Ezra — 1 Chronicles overview
- A. 1–10 Reuben, the firstborn who lost the birthright
- B. 11–17 Gad's households settled in Bashan
- C. 18–22 The war cry God answered against the Hagrites
- D. 23–26 Half-Manasseh's greatness and the exile that ended it
The outline
A.Reuben, the firstborn who lost the birthrightvv. 1 to 10
Read vv. 1 to 10 →B.Gad's households settled in Bashanvv. 11 to 17
Read vv. 11 to 17 →C.The war cry God answered against the Hagritesvv. 18 to 22
Read vv. 18 to 22 →D.Half-Manasseh's greatness and the exile that ended itvv. 23 to 26
Read vv. 23 to 26 →
The world behind this chapter
1 Chronicles 5The history
Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh settled east of the Jordan because the land suited flocks. It is a rolling plateau, drier than the western hills, with wide open grazing and few natural defenses — good for herds, bad for safety, and permanently exposed to the desert tribes on its eastern edge.
The war with the Hagrites and their allies is a stock-raid on a large scale, and the spoil list tells you what wealth looked like there: fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, two thousand donkeys. Camels mattered because they crossed desert that sheep could not.
The chapter also settles a legal point up front. Reuben lost the birthright — the double share of the estate — because of what he did with his father's concubine, and it went to Joseph's sons; but the rule over the family went to Judah. The writer separates the two on purpose, because his whole book runs on Judah's right to rule.
The ending is the first Israelite deportation in the Bible. The king who carried these tribes away is named twice — 'Pul' and 'Tiglath-pileser' — and they are one man: Pulu was his throne name in Babylon, a fact confirmed by the Babylonian king lists. Assyria moved conquered populations deliberately, resettling them far away at Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, precisely so that a people would forget who it was.
What it meant to them
These were the first Israelites ever deported, and the writer states the cause without softening it: they broke faith with the God of their fathers and went after the gods of the peoples around them. The men listening had lived the same sentence a century and a half later.
It also explained an empty map. Israel had held that plateau for seven hundred years. When the returned exiles looked east across the Jordan, other people were living there, and this chapter told them why.
Sources cited
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
- Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on 1 Chronicles 5. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.