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 7-9.

I have mentioned before that I do not like reading these genealogies and do not get much out of them. However, others find more in them than I do, and I have heard sermons and read messages which show how they sometimes teach us important lessons. I found a couple of interesting things as I read today. This account was written sometime after the Exiles returned, since it lists some of those who returned. However, the writer had access to records from when David was king. He specifically tells us that one of his number of descendants of Issachar was from the time of David (I would suspect it was from the census David took). The writer does not say, but I believe that the other numbers of fighting men he lists as descended from one or another of Jacob’s sons come from the same source. I wonder whether those records were preserved by the Exiles and brought back with them, or were they uncovered while the Returned Exiles were rebuilding Jerusalem? We know from other passages that some of the information contained here could have come from documents the Returned Exiles brought back with them.

I find it interesting that this account tells us that two of Ephraim’s sons died on a cattle raid near Gath. Now we know that Ephraim was born to Joseph in Egypt and his sons would have lived in Egypt. From this we can conclude that in the early period while the Israelites were in Egypt they went on raids to the land of Canaan. In the same portion we are told that one of Ephraim’s granddaughters founded two towns in what became Israel. These two things suggest that in the early years after Jacob’s family went to Egypt they still were active in the Land of Canaan.