1 Chronicles6chapter 6

1 Chronicles 6:1-3

Gershon, Kohath, and Merari: Levi's three sons open a line that will split three ways: the kingdom to Judah, the birthright to Joseph, and the priesthood to Levi, a division Gill draws directly from these opening verses. Amram's children stand together as three names, Aaron, Moses, and Miriam, the only place in the chapter where a woman is named among the sons. Aaron's four sons follow, and only two of them, Eleazar and Ithamar, carry forward the line the rest of the chapter will trace.

1 Chronicles 6:4-15

The priestly line runs unbroken from Aaron's grandson Phinehas, whose zeal is remembered in Numbers 25, through Zadok who served David and Solomon, down to Jehozadak, who goes into captivity at verse 15 when the Lord carries Judah and Jerusalem away by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. Barnes flags a gap between Amariah and Hilkiah, three generations recorded for a span the list of Judah's kings shows lasted closer to two hundred years. The office keeps its own exile ledger alongside the throne David was promised, ending in Babylon exactly as the kingdom did.

1 Chronicles 6:16-30

Gershom, Kohath, and Merari: The sons of Levi are named a second time to open the wider Levitical houses that did not descend from Aaron, and the list traces Gershom, Kohath, and Merari down toward David's own day. Kohath's branch is carried furthest, reaching Elkanah and Samuel the prophet, whose sons are recorded here under a name, Vashni, that Clarke and Jamieson Fausset and Brown both read as a copied Hebrew phrase for and the second rather than a proper name. Samuel never held the priesthood; his place in this family explains how a Levite living in Ephraim's hill country could judge Israel and anoint its first two kings.

1 Chronicles 6:31-48

David set the singers apart only after the ark had rest, and their genealogies are traced with unusual care: Heman from Kohath's line back to Samuel and Korah, Asaph from Gershom's line standing at his right hand, and Ethan from Merari's line standing at his left. These three names stand behind dozens of Psalm titles, and Edersheim's Temple work traces the office to the Levitical standing recorded here rather than to any priestly rank. The Levites without a gift for song were not set aside; they were appointed unto all manner of service of the tabernacle, the roles Aaron's sons alone could not fill.

1 Chronicles 6:49

One verse draws the line the rest of the chapter assumes: Aaron and his sons alone offered on the altars and entered the place most holy to make atonement, a service no Levite genealogy could stand in for however carefully it was traced. Jamieson Fausset and Brown read the verse as the hinge between the office already described and the named men who filled it. The same distinction stands behind Uzziah's judgment for taking up the censer in 2 Chronicles 26.

1 Chronicles 6:50-53

A second, shorter list of Aaron's sons repeats the priestly line from Eleazar down to Ahimaaz, the priest of David's own reign, without carrying it forward to the captivity as the first list did. Clarke reads the doubling as evidence the Chronicler had more than one older list in hand and drew on each where it served the record he was compiling.

1 Chronicles 6:54-60

The priests receive Hebron first, a city of refuge already bound to Caleb's conquest in Joshua, its fields kept for Caleb's own family while the town and its suburbs went to Aaron's sons. Twelve more towns across Judah, Simeon and Benjamin round out the priests' thirteen cities, a roster Gill sets beside Joshua 21 and finds matching with only a few names spelled differently.

1 Chronicles 6:61-81

The rest of the Levites receive their portion by lot from the remaining tribes: Kohath's remainder from Ephraim and half of Manasseh, Gershom's from Issachar, Asher, Naphtali and Bashan, and Merari's from Reuben, Gad and Zebulun, closing the record of a tribe with no territory of its own. Henry notes that every region of Israel kept a Levite's city inside it, so that no part of the land lacked someone to teach the law. Among Kohath's grant stand cities of refuge such as Shechem, folding the sanctuary and the place of safety into the same set of towns.