Bible Commentaries
1 Chronicles 3

Introduction

In this chapter the royal line of David is brought down to several generations beyond Zerubbabel. The list connects naturally with 1 Chronicles 3:15 of the previous chapter, but our author evidently wished to give a distinct and prominent place to the Davidic register.

The list of David’s descendants after Zerubbabel (1 Chronicles 3:19-24) has occasioned some difficulty among critics, since it seems to bring the genealogy down to a period as late as the time of Alexander, or even later. This was a point of time later than that at which the Old Testament Canon is supposed to have been finished. But several names may have been added by later editors of the sacred canon; for a few names occurring in such a fragment are not sufficient to settle the question of the date of the entire Book of Chronicles.

But the supposition that, in the genealogy extends to so late a date is not sufficiently supported. Hattush 1 Chronicles 3:22, is doubtless identical with “Hattush of the sons of Shechaniah,” mentioned in Ezra 8:2-3, who returned with Ezra from Babylon, and who may have lived to see his brother Neariah’s youngest grandson, Anani, 1 Chronicles 3:24. It is possible also, as Keil suggests, that the sons of Rephaiah, etc., (1 Chronicles 3:21,) were not descended directly from Zerubbabel, but were branches of the family of David whose exact lines of descent and whose ages it is not now possible to ascertain.