I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Chronicles 5-6.

It is unclear to me why the genealogical records here for the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh are so sparse relative  to those for Judah previously and Levi later in today’s passage.  Perhaps the reason is that few, if any of their descendants had returned to the land of Israel in the post-Exilic period.  However, it is clear that the writer was familiar with communities of them living in the areas where they had been taken into exile.  This suggests to me that the post-Exile residents of the land of Israel interacted with and traded with those who remained settled elsewhere.

In both the genealogies of the tribes which had settled east of the Jordan and the more detailed one of the Levites the compiler gives a rather detailed account of where they had lived within the the Kingdom of Israel.  The writer probably included this to establish a claim to the lands being described, or perhaps a better wording would be to establish the lands which he felt his people should aspire to regain control over.