1 Chronicles 7:20-29 meaning

After the record of the sons of Manasseh in the previous passage, 1 Chronicles 7:20-27 begins in the ordinary way, a chain of fathers and sons: the sons of Ephraim were Shuthelah and Bered his son, Tahath his son, Eleadah his son, Tahath his son, Zabad his son, Shuthelah his son (vv 20-21a). Shuthelah heads Ephraim's clans in the wilderness census (Numbers 26:35-36), and the repeated names--two Tahaths, two Shuthelahs--show the familiar habit of naming sons for their forefathers. Then the chain breaks mid-verse into tragedy: and Ezer and Elead whom the men of Gath who were born in the land killed, because they came down to take their livestock (v 21). The plainest reading is that these sons of Ephraim, Ezer and Elead, went down toward Gath to seize herds and died in the raid at the hands of the city's native-born men; the Hebrew allows the raid to have run in either direction, and Scripture leaves the detail open. Either way, violence over livestock cut two branches from the patriarch's tree, and the event evidently fell within Ephraim's own lifetime, during Israel's years in Egypt, when his family already reached toward the land of promise.

Then the register does something rare--it pauses to grieve: their father Ephraim mourned many days, and his relatives came to comfort him (v 22). This verse presents somewhat of an enigma. On first read, it almost looks as if the founding patriarch of the tribe is still alive some eight generations later. There are a few explanations for why there is a mourning father called Ephraim in this part of the genealogy. One possibility is that the Ephraimite men who the men of Gath killed (v 21) were not necessarily the men whose names are listed at the end of the genealogy. The event could refer to any of the sons listed. The Hebrew is obscure enough to allow multiple interpretations. If this event happened earlier in the generations, then this Ephraim might very well be the second son of Joseph. On the other hand, it may be that Zabad, whose sons were Shuthelah, Ezer, and Elead, was called by the name Ephraim. Many of the genealogical records show one person with multiple names. Perhaps the name Ephraim was bestowed on whoever was the head of the tribe. The exact answer is unclear, but there are several possibilities.

Whether or not this father was the direct grandson of Jacob, his actions mirror those of Jacob after he was deceived into believing his son was dead. Genesis says he "mourned for his son many days" while "all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him" (Genesis 37:34-35). This descendant of Jacob now sat where he once did. The chronicler let the sorrow stand in the middle of the family record, and his first readers--a community acquainted with catastrophe--would have understood why. The genealogies of God's people carry grief as truthfully as they carry numbers.

Life resumed after loss: then he went in to his wife, and she conceived and bore a son, and he named him Beriah, because misfortune had come upon his house (v 23). The name Beriah sounds like the Hebrew for "in misfortune"--Ephraim wrote the wound into his son's name. Yet the child himself was the answer to the wound: a new son, a continuing line, a future on the far side of grief.

The next generation continues: His daughter was Sheerah, who built lower and upper Beth-horon, also Uzzen-sheerah (v 24). A woman of Ephraim founded the twin fortress towns commanding the ridge road from the coastal plain up into the hill country--the pass where Joshua's forces chased the Amorite kings while the LORD threw down hailstones (Joshua 10:10-11), and the towns Solomon rebuilt as fortified cities with walls, gates, and bars (2 Chronicles 8:5). The third town, Uzzen-sheerah, carries her own name. In a chapter of soldiers, the master builder of Ephraim's strategic gateway was a daughter. 

From Beriah's house the line runs straight toward its destination: Rephah was his son along with Resheph, Telah his son, Tahan his son, Ladan his son, Ammihud his son, Elishama his son, Non his son and Joshua his son (vv 25-27). The last three names land with weight. Elishama the son of Ammihud was the leader of Ephraim's camp in the wilderness, who marched at the head of his tribe from Sinai (Numbers 1:10; 2:18). His grandson was Joshua--Hoshea the son of Nun, whom Moses renamed Joshua, "the LORD is salvation" (Numbers 13:16), the spy who believed God (Numbers 14:6-9), and the commander who led Israel across the Jordan. Here is the quiet thunder of Ephraim's register: the line that buried the sons killed by the men of Gath (v 21), the house that named a son for its misfortune, produced the man who brought all Israel into the land God promised. God raised Israel's deliverance out of a grieving household.

The register then turns from persons to places: their possessions and settlements were Bethel with its towns, and to the east Naaran, and to the west Gezer with its towns, and Shechem with its towns as far as Ayyah with its towns (v 28). The map matches the allotment Joshua drew for the sons of Joseph (Joshua 16:1-10)--from Bethel in the south, where Jacob saw the ladder (Genesis 28:19), across to Gezer on the west, north to Shechem, where the bones of Joseph himself were buried in the plot Jacob bought (Joshua 24:32). Manasseh's holdings follow: along the borders of the sons of Manasseh, Beth-shean with its towns, Taanach with its towns, Megiddo with its towns, Dor with its towns (v 29)--the chain of fortress cities guarding the Jezreel valley and the coast, assigned to Manasseh within Issachar and Asher (Joshua 17:11). Judges 1:27-29 records that these towns long remained in Canaanite hands; the register writes them into Joseph's inheritance all the same, because God's allotment stood whether or not Israel had yet taken hold of it. The section closes over the whole map: in these lived the sons of Joseph the son of Israel (v 29)--the double portion Jacob promised when he claimed Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons (Genesis 48:5) and set the younger before the elder with crossed hands (Genesis 48:14, 19-20).