1 Chronicles 1:39

And the sons of Lotan; Hori, and Homam: and Timna was Lotan's sister.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(39) And Timna was Lotan’s sister.—This appears to mean that the tribe settled in the town of Timna was akin to the sons of Lotan, but not a subdivision of that tribe. Towns are feminine in Hebrew, and are sometimes called mothers (2Samuel 20:19), sometimes daughters.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

28-54 The genealogy is from hence confined to the posterity of Abraham. Let us take occasion from reading these lists of names, to think of the multitudes that have gone through this world, have done their parts in it, and then quitted it. As one generation, even of sinful men, passes away, another comes. Ec 1:4; Nu 32:14, and will do so while the earth remains. Short is our passage through time into eternity. May we be distinguished as the Lord's people.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Timna - In Genesis 36:11, Eliphaz has no son Timna; but he has a concubine of the name, who is the mother of Amalek, and conjectured to be Lotan's sister 1 Chronicles 1:39. The best explanation is, that the writer has in his mind rather the tribes descended from Eliphaz than his actual children, and as there was a place, Timna, inhabited by his "dukes" (1 Chronicles 1:51; compare Genesis 35:40), he puts the race which lived there among his "sons."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

37. Reuel—a powerful branch of the great Aeneze tribe, the Rowalla Arabs.

Shammah—the great tribe Beni Shammar. In the same way, the names of the other kings and dukes are traced in the modern tribes of Arabia. But it is unnecessary to mention any more of these obscure nomads, except to notice that Jobab (1Ch 1:44), one of the kings of Edom, is considered to be Job, and that his seat was in the royal city of Dinahab (Ge 36:32; 1Ch 1:43), identified with O'Daeb, a well-known town in the center of Al Dahna, a great northern desert in the direction of Chaldea and the Euphrates [Forster].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the sons of Seir,.... This man and his posterity were not of the race of Esau, but are mentioned because they were a family into which Esau, and a son of his, married, and whose possessions he and his obtained. The account from hence, to the end of 1 Chronicles 1:42 is the same with Genesis 36:20, with some little variation of names.

Geneva Study Bible

And the sons of Lotan; Hori, and Homam: and Timna was Lotan's sister.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

1 Chronicles 1:39

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

When Esau with his descendants had settled in Mount Seir, they subdued by degrees the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, and became fused with them into one people. For this reason, in Genesis 36:20-30 the tribal princes of the Seirite inhabitants of the land are noticed; and in our chapter also, 1 Chronicles 1:38, the names of these seven שׂעיר בּני, and in 1 Chronicles 1:39-42 of their sons (eighteen men and one woman, Timna), are enumerated, where only Aholibamah the daughter of Anah, also mentioned in Genesis 36:25, is omitted. The names correspond, except in a few unimportant points, which have been already discussed in the Commentary on Genesis. The inhabitants of Mount Seir consisted, then, after the immigration of Esau and his descendants, of twenty tribes under a like number of phylarchs, thirteen of whom were Edomite, of the family of Esau, and seven Seirite, who are called in the Chronicle שׂעיר בּני, and in Genesis חרי, Troglodytes, inhabitants of the land, that is, aborigines.

If we glance over the whole posterity of Abraham as they are enumerated in 1 Chronicles 1:28-42, we see that it embraces (a) his sons Ishmael and Isaac, and Isaac's sons Israel and Esau (together 4 persons); (b) the sons of Ishmael, or the tribes descended from Ishmael (12 names); (c) the sons and grandsons of Keturah (13 persons or chiefs); (d) the thirteen phylarchs descended from Esau; (e) the seven Seirite phylarchs, and eighteen grandsons and a granddaughter of Seir (26 persons). We have thus in all the names of sixty-eight persons, and to them we must add Keturah, and Timna the concubine of Eliphaz, before we get seventy persons. But these seventy must not by any means be reckoned as seventy tribes, which is the result Bertheau arrives at by means of strange calculations and errors in numbers.

(Note: That the Chronicle gives no countenance to this view appears from Bertheau's calculation of the 70 tribes: from Ishmael, 12; from Keturah, 13; from Isaac, 2; from Esau, 5 sons and 7 grandchildren of Eliphaz (Timna, 1 Chronicles 1:36, being included in the number), and 4 grandsons by Reuel - 16 in all; from Seir 7 sons, and from these 20 other descendants, 27 in all, which makes the sum of 70. But the biblical text mentions only 19 other descendants of Seir, so that only 26 persons came from Seir, and the sum is therefore 12 + 13 + 2 + 16 + 26 equals 69. But we must also object to other points in Bertheau's reckoning: (1) the arbitrary change of Timna into a grandchild of Esau; (2) the arbitrary reckoning of Esau and Israel ( equals Jacob) without Ishmael. Was Esau, apart from his sons, the originator of a people? Had the author of the Chronicle cherished the purpose attributed to him by Bertheau, of bringing the lists of names handed down by tradition to the round or significant number 70, he would certainly in 1 Chronicles 1:33 not have omitted the three peoples descended from Dedan (Genesis 25:3), as he might by these names have completed the number 70 without further trouble.)

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."