Upon this conclusion he founds his hypothesis, that as the three branches of the family of Noah are divided into seventy peoples (which, as we have seen before is not the case), so also the three branches of the family of Abraham are divided into seventy tribes; and in this again he finds a remarkable indication “that even in the time of the chronicler, men sought by means of numbers to bring order and consistency into the lists of names handed down by tradition from the ancient times.”
Verses 43-50
1Ch 1:43-50The kings of Edom before the introduction of the kingship into Israel. - This is a verbally exact repetition of Gen 36:31-39, except that the introductory formula, Gen 36:32, “and there reigned in Edom,” which is superfluous after the heading, and the addition “ben Achbor” (Gen 36:39) in the account of the death of Baal-hanan in 1Ch 1:50, are omitted; the latter because even in Genesis, where mention is made of the death of other kings, the name of the father of the deceased king is not repeated. Besides this, the king called Hadad (v. 46f.), and the city פּעי (v. 50), are in Genesis Hadar (Gen 36:35.) and פּעוּ (Gen 36:39). The first of these variations has arisen from a transcriber's error, the other from a different pronunciation of the name. A somewhat more important divergence, however, appears, when in Gen 36:39 the death of the king last named is not mentioned, because he was still alive in the time of Moses; while in the Chronicle, on the contrary, not only of him also is it added, הדד ויּמת, because at the time of the writing of the Chronicle he had long been dead, but the list of the names of the territories of the phylarchs, which in Genesis follows the introductory formula שׁמות alum ואלּה, is here connected with the enumeration of the kings by ויּהיוּ, “Hadad died, and there were chiefs of Edom.” This may mean that, in the view of the
