Bible Commentaries

1 Chronicles 5:19. The Hagarites, that is, the Ishmaelites, who descended from Hagar’s son.

1 Chronicles 5:21. Fifty thousand. The LXX read, five thousand. The ancient way of numbering by letters, instead of figures, occasioned these variations.

1 Chronicles 5:22. The war of God. Great things in scripture are said to be of God; as the mount of God, the cedars of God, or a battle gained by the special providence of God. The two tribes and a half beyond the Jordan, though separated from the house of David, were prospered more than those tribes under the kingdom of Samaria, until they became equally apostate.

1 Chronicles 5:23. Baal-hermon and Senir. See the note on Psalms 133.

REFLECTIONS.

The sad case of Reuben has already been considered. Genesis 35. and 49. It resembles the sin of the incestuous Corinthian: and we cannot but admire the firmness of Jacob and St. Paul, who pronounced the lenient sentence of excommunication against the offenders, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.

The Hagarian war, though we know not the exact time when it happened, marks the full accomplishment of the prediction, that the son of the bondwoman should not be heir with the son of the freewoman. The immense booty now taken, farther demonstrates that God had blessed Ishmael according to his promise. But what avail wealth and prosperity where wickedness prevails? It is just so much spoil treasured up for the enemy. Tilgath-pilneser ultimately punished the Israelites as they had punished their brethren, the Ishmaelites. Thus the sacred writings keep to the general point, first to trace the degeneracy, and then the chastisement of every family and of every nation.

The phrase, “to this day,” shows that the remnants did not return from the shore of the Caspian sea, when they returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple.