Bible Commentaries

1 Chronicles 7:1-11

Now the Sons of Issachar were, Tola, and Puah, Jaahub, and Shimrom, four.

Statistics

1. Statistics play an important part in Chronicles and in the Old Testament generally.

2. Biblical statistics are examples in accuracy and thoroughness of information, and recognitions of the more obscure and prosaic manifestations of the higher life. In these and other ways the Bible gives an anticipatory sanction to the exact sciences.

3. Statistics are the only form in which many acts of service can be recognised and recorded. The missionary report can only tell the story of a few striking conversions; it may give the history of the exceptional self-denial in one or two of its subscriptions; for the rest we must be content with tables and subscription-lists.

4. Our chronicler’s interest in statistics lays healthy emphasis on the practical character of religion. There is a danger of identifying spiritual force with literary and rhetorical gifts; to recognise the religious value of statistics is the most forcible protest against such identification. The supreme service of the Church in any age is its influence on its own generation, by which it moulds the generation immediately following. That influence can only be estimated by a careful study of all possible information and especially of statistics.

5. The lists in Chronicles are few and meagre compared to the records of Greenwich Observatory or the volumes which contain the data of biology and sociology; but the chronicler becomes, in a certain sense, the forerunner of Darwin, Spencer, and Galton. (W. H. Bennett, M. A.)

1 Chronicles 7:11

Fit to go out for war and battle.

The need for preparation

“Fit to go” is an expression which points to the matter of qualification. Mere age does not make a man fit to sit in the council, or to go forth to battle, or to assume the position of dignity, We must undergo discipline, instruction, mortification. Do not go out until you are qualified. When you are truly qualified you will know the fact by the using of holy impulses, by the pressure as of an invisible hand urging you on in the right way, the way of Divine decree and destiny. To-day should always be a preparation for to-morrow; everything we learn should have in it something more than itself. When the gymnast undergoes his discipline, it is that he may use his acquired strength in other and better directions than mere amusement. Let all eating and drinking, all reading and study, all companionship and travel, have before it a high purpose, a purpose of preparation for battle and race, for conflict and suffering. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Fit for war

Genius, say some, is but a capacity for hard work. This is not a whole truth; there must be work in accordance with law. The miner who digs for gold on the seashore will never find it, though he dig ever so laboriously; but if he study gold and the geologic strata in which it lives, he has begun to put himself in harmony with law. Mere work, unless properly directed, is like riding a hobby-horse; there is energy and motion, but no progress For years Napoleon was living in miniature the battles he was to fight, analysing strategic moves and positions, and training his mind to thus grasp a new situation on the instant. Von Moltke studied the military topography of all Europe, and with marvellous foresight thought out how to win. His victory was no triumph of mere fortune or special inspiration. It was but the logical outcome of his trained mind, and a trained mind ever lights the torch of its own inspiration. Leonardo da Vinci always carried in his girdle his sketch-book in his walks “in Florence, constantly looking for picturesque” faces. “In the silence of the night, he would counsel himself,” recall the ideas of the things you have studied. Design in your spirit the contours and outlines of the figures you have seen during the day.” (New Science Review.)

1 Chronicles 7:21-22

Whom the men of Gath that wore born in that land slew.

The massacre of Ephraim’s children

In the mines of Peru, there are veins of peculiar richness; but the very rubbish is valuable. In the Bible there are passages of peculiar importance, but there is nothing trifling, nothing useless. To be able to extract from the more barren portions of Scripture the instructions they were intended to communicate is a talent which every Christian should cultivate. This passage teaches us--

I. That there is no individual or society secure from sudden and severe misfortune. Oh! it is natural for us, when we are happy, to cherish the thought that we shall continue to be happy. And we may be placed in circumstances in which such an anticipation seems not only natural but reasonable. Our worldly substance may be abundant; our bodily constitution may be sound and strong, promising us a long and healthy life; our children may be growing up around us, with every appearance of being the support and comfort of our declining years. We may enjoy the affection of our friends. Very few persons have ever been so prosperous, or had equal ground to presume on the permanence of their prosperity as Ephraim. We have reason to hope that Ephraim was a good man. He was certainly the son of a very good man. We cannot doubt that his father Joseph gave him a religious education. We know that Ephraim was a wealthy man. It was, indeed, his great wealth that excited the cupidity of these Philistine robbers. It is obvious that he had reached a good old age, and he had gathered around him children and children’s children, and the children of children’s children. You can easily suppose the good old man retiring to rest happy in his possessions, and happier still in his anticipations, for he had reason to anticipate coming prosperity. God had spoken good of all the descendants of Israel, but of none had He spoken so much good as of Ephraim. In his numerous descendants he probably pleased himself with the thought, that he saw the begun accomplishment of the promise that his seed should become a multitude of nations. But what a fearful and sudden reverse was he destined to experience! This affecting incident reads a lesson to us all. It tells those who are afflicted, “in patience to possess their souls”; and it bids those who are happy, “join trembling with their mirth.” It tells those who are in affliction to give God thanks that they have not been afflicted as Ephraim was. We may have been bereaved of much, it may be, but where is any of us that can for a moment compare his bereavements with those of Ephraim?

II. That the dispensations of Divine providence are often apparently in direct opposition to the declarations of the Divine promise. It is difficult to conceive a more striking illustration of this general principle than that furnished by the remarkable incident recorded in the passage before us. Ephraim, as a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had an interest in all the promises made to his illustrious ancestors. “I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth,” said Jehovah to Abraham; “as the number of the stars, so shall thy seed be.” Ephraim was one of the sons of Joseph, and of course Ephraim had his share in the remarkable blessing that was pronounced on his father. “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall.” Nor was this all; Ephraim had a share in that blessing which Jacob pronounced on himself, and on his brother Manasseh. When Joseph heard that his father was sick, apparently to death, he went to visit him, and he took along with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Jacob having been told that his son Joseph was coming to see him, strengthened himself, and sat upon his bed. “And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz, in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, and said unto me, Behold I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people,” etc. There was more even than this. There was a great peculiarity in the manner in which Jacob pronounced this blessing. He crossed his hands, and laid his right hand on Ephraim, the youngest, and his left hand on Manasseh, the eldest; and when Joseph attempted to alter the position of the old man’s hands, he replied, “I know it, my son, I know it,” etc. Such was the promise; and in the narrative before us, you see the providence. Can two things be more apparently in direct opposition? Here is a promise that Ephraim shall be more prosperous than all his brethren; and here is a providence that deprives Ephraim at once of all his property, and, as it would seem, of all his children also. Nor is this at all an unparalleled or even an uncommon case, so far as apparent contrariety between the providence and promise of God is concerned. Was it like a fulfilment of a promise made to Israel that Jehovah would give them a good and large land, flowing with milk and honey, to lead them directly into the depths of the Arabian wilderness and keep them wandering there for forty years? Was it like a fulfilment of the promise which God had made to David, that he would make him the ruler of his people, when he drove him from the court of Saul, and exposed him to imminent hazard of his life on the mountains of Israel from the persecutions of his infuriated enemy? I can appeal to the experience of every Christian. Is it not distinctly stated in God’s Word that no evil shall happen to the righteous? Is it not distinctly said, what is good God will give His people? Now, I put it to every Christian, if he has not in the course of his life met with much which at the time he could not help thinking evil for him? The reason of this apparent inconsistency of the providence with the promises of God, is by no means that there is a real opposition between them. It is the same God who speaks in His Word that works in His providence--and He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. His Word and His work are really perfectly harmonious; and in many cases those dispensations, which are apparently frustrating the promise are, in reality, fulfilling it. The reason why the promise and the providence of God often seem to us to be at variance, is our ignorance of the extent and of the particular design of the Divine dispensations. If we could see the commencement, and progress, and issue of all God’s dispensations, we would gladly say, He is doing all things well, as we shall by and by be constrained to say, He has done all things well. But in the present state this must be a matter of faith, not of sense. It is the Divine appointment, that here we must walk by faith.

III. That the dissolution of those connections that bind us together in a variety of relations in human life, occasions to all rightly constituted minds severe suffering and permanent sorrow. It would be a miserable world--at least I am sure it would not be a happy one--if there were no husbands and wives, parents and children, and brothers and sisters, relative and friends. That man must be deplorably selfish, who, on reflecting on the various sources of his happiness, does not find social relation and affection one of the most copious. In proportion to the happiness springing from these relations, is the pain that is occasioned when they are dissolved, especially when they are unexpectedly and violently dissolved. Not merely are our friends the proper objects of a much stronger kind of affection than any other species of property; but their loss is of all other earthly losses the most irreparable. Our property, our reputation, our health, may be lost and regained. But a friend whom we have lost by death, we never can bring back again from the grove. (J. Brown, D. D.)

Family sorrow

I. The Cause Of Sorrow.

II. The Sympathy In The Sorrow.

III. The Remembrance Of The Sorrow.

1. Perpetuated in joy.

2. Perpetuated in sorrow. (J. Wolfendale.)