1 Chronicles 7:8

And the sons of Becher; Zemira, and Joash, and Eliezer, and Elioenai, and Omri, and Jerimoth, and Abiah, and Anathoth, and Alameth. All these are the sons of Becher.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(8) Nine sons of Becher.

The sons of Becher.—See Note on 1Chronicles 7:6. The nine Benjamite houses here enumerated might have been known as “sons of the firstborn.” They are nowhere else recorded. The remarkable name Elioenai is frequent in the Chronicles. (See 1Chronicles 3:23; 1Chronicles 4:36; 1Chronicles 7:8; Ezra 10:22; Ezra 10:27; uncontracted, Eliohenai, 1Chronicles 26:3, Ezra 8:4.)

Anathoth and Alameth (Alemeth) were Levitical towns in Benjamin (1Chronicles 6:60).

Jerimoth, or Jeremoth (a son of Bela, 1Chronicles 7:7), looks like another local name. (Comp. Jarmuth and Ramoth.) It also occurs often in the Chronicles (eight or nine times). The clans may have borne the names of their seats.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:1-40 Genealogies. - Here is no account either of Zebulun or Dan. We can assign no reason why they only should be omitted; but it is the disgrace of the tribe of Dan, that idolatry began in that colony which fixed in Laish, and called it Dan, Jud 18 and there one of the golden calves was set up by Jeroboam. Dan is omitted, Re 7. Men become abominable when they forsake the worship of the true God, for any creature object.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The lists here are remarkably different from those in marginal references Probably the persons here mentioned were not literally "sons," but were among the later descendants of the founders, being the chief men of the family at the time of David's census.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. the sons of Bela—Each of them was chief or leader of the family to which he belonged. In an earlier period seven great families of Benjamin are mentioned (Nu 26:38), five of them being headed by these five sons of Benjamin, and two descended from Bela. Here five families of Bela are specified, whence we are led to conclude that time or the ravages of war had greatly changed the condition of Benjamin, or that the five families of Bela were subordinate to the other great divisions that sprang directly from the five sons of the patriarch.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the sons of Becher,.... Another son of Benjamin, 1 Chronicles 7:6,

Zemira, and Joash, and Eliezer and Elioenai, and Omri, and Jerimoth, and Abiah, and Anathoth, and Alameth; the two last of these, according to Kimchi, gave names to two cities in Benjamin, built by them; Anathoth, the native place of Jeremiah the prophet, and Alameth, the same with Bahurim, 2 Samuel 16:5.

all these are the sons of Becher; before named.

Geneva Study Bible

And the sons of Becher; Zemira, and Joash, and Eliezer, and Elioenai, and Omri, and Jerimoth, and Abiah, and Anathoth, and Alameth. All these are the sons of Becher.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. Anathoth, and Alameth] both names of places; 1 Chronicles 6:60 (45, Heb., “Allemeth”); Jeremiah 1:1. Descendants of Bela inhabited these towns.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - Joash. This name, of which nothing else is known, is spelt with an ayin, not with an aleph, as are the names of the seven other persons called (Authorized Version) Joash. Jerimoth. This name is spelt with a tsere, and not, as the Jerimoth of ver. 7, with khirik. All the names of this verse must be regarded as those of heads of families, and not the literal sons of Becher. 1 Chronicles 7:8

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Becher's descendants. Of these nine names there are two, ענתות and עלמת, which occur elsewhere as names of cities (cf. for עלמת in the form עלּמת, 1 Chronicles 6:45; and for ענתות, Joshua 21:18; Isaiah 10:30; Jeremiah 1:1). We may, without doubt, accept the supposition that in these cases the cities received their names from the heads of the families which inhabited them. In 1 Chronicles 7:9, אבותם בּית ראשׁי stands in apposition to, and is explanatory of, לתולדותם: "And their register, according to their generations," viz., according to the generations, that is, the birth-lists, "of the heads of their fathers'-houses, is (amounts to) in valiant heroes 20,200 men."