Bible Commentaries

1 Chronicles 7:3. All of them chief men— Heads of families. They are said to have been five. Four only are reckoned; the name of one is omitted.

REFLECTIONS.—Ephraim, the most distinguished of the tribes next to Judah, suffers more than any of them at first. We have here,

1. The breach made in his family. The men of Gath, who had gone up from Egypt to settle there, now made an irruption upon that part of Goshen where Zabad (who seems to be a second son of Ephraim after Shuthelah) and his sons fed their cattle, in defending which they lost their lives. Note; (1.) We are nowhere safe from danger; therefore, as those who are in jeopardy every hour, let us be always ready for the stroke of death. (2.) A good cause is not always successful. God now often permits the wicked to prosper; but a day is coming, when all God's dispensations will be cleared up to us.

2. Ephraim beheld with anguish the losses of his family, and was ready to lay down his grey hairs with sorrow in the grave; but his brethren pour the friendly balm of consolation into his wounded heart, and encourage him to trust still in God. Note; (1.) They who live long, often live to see their sorrows multiplied, and to bury the choicest of their worldly comforts. (2.) To soothe the grief of the afflicted, is to act the part of a brother: an unfeeling heart cannot be in a true Israelite.

3. God gave him another son in his old age, whom, in remembrance of the evils which had happened to his family, he called בריעה Beriah, in evil; a fit name for every miserable babe born in sin, exposed to an evil world, and liable to eternal suffering.

4. The genealogy closes with Joshua, so famed in the book of God, who was the peculiar glory of this tribe. Note; A great good man reflects honour on all who are related to him.