We shall not, then, attempt to set forth the con tents of the various genealogies to be found in the book of Chronicles and other parts of thc O. T.,' but merely give some instances in illustration of the foregoing general views., and of the use which, notwithstanding their imperfect state, may be made of these records.
We have an instance of the way in which men of one tribe might be reckoned as belonging to another, in consequence of a possession or inheri tance coming to them within the district of that other, in the case of Jair, the grandson of Hez ron, the head of one great branch of the tribe of Judah. His grandfather had married a daughter of Machir, the grandson of Manasseh ; and Jair had assisted the tribe of Manasseh in their conquest of Gilead on the east side of Jordan before the en trance of the great body of the Israelites into the Promised Land. He consequently obtained as his possession the towns which he had conquered, and which he called Havoth-Jair, and was reckoned as of the tribe of Manasseh, and was called the son of Manasseh (Num. xxxii. 40 ; Dent. iii. 14), though by paternal descent of the tribe of Judah. That of which we here see a special instance may very well have happened in many other cases, and pro bably did happen in the case of Caleb, the son of Jeplaunneh, otherwise called the Kenezite. We read that Joshua appointed him an inheritance in the tribe of Judah : from this expression it is rea sonable to infer that he did not actually belong to the tribe of Judah, and we are confirmed in this opinion by noticing that, in the pedigree of the tribe of Judah, where the name of Caleb frequently occurs, there is no statement which distinctly con nects Caleb the son of 7ephitithelz by paternal descent with that tribe, no mention of Kenaz his grandfather, or of Jephunneh his father, as so connected. A very probable inferehce is, that Caleb was not by birth of the tribe of Judah, or of any of the tribes of Israel at all, but one of those men of Esauite or Ishmaelite descent who mar ried Israelitish women (as Ithra the Ishmaelite, who married Abigail the sister of David ; and Jarha the Egyptian, who married the daughter of Sheshan, Chron. 17-35), and so became incor porated with the tribe of their wives. Here, then, would be a source of ambiguity in consequence of the doztble genealogy of such persons—the one con necting them with their paternal ancestiy, the other rington's genealogical tables. There is also a
small edition of the Bible, Prayer-book, Psalter, etc., printed at Edinburgh in 1636, containing- a curious and interesting set of tables of The genea logies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures according to every tribe and family.' A learned and valuable collection of genealogies illustrative of sacred history and prophecy, by the Rev. Fred. Martin, M.A., rector of South Somer cotes and prebendary of Lincoln, has been printed at the University press, Cambridge, tS55. The first four tables contain genealogies taken from the Bible, and exhibit contintiously—` I. Adam, Noah, Terah ; II. Abraham, Job, Ruth, and Judges ; III. The kings of Israel and Judah (including our Lord's descent according to the flesh), with the contempormy prophets, and Tobit, Damascus, Tyre ; IV. The high-priests till the Maccabees, with Asaph, IIeman, and Ethan or Jeduthun.' The other five tables give from general sources the genealogies of the ruling families of various coun tries connected with Bible history. The work also contains tables of parallel years, arid other useful and interesting matter.
classifying them with the tribe to which they had become affiliated, and with which they might be really connected by marriage or maternal descent. There would be no doubt about the matter if the fact of such marriage or maternal connection were stated; but where grandsons or great-grandsons are recorded as sons, and mothers' names omitted, there is no security against mistake.
Another source of uncertainty is the manifest corruption of the text, and dislocation of the order of the genealogies. A most remarkable instance of this is to be seen in Chron. vi. That chapter contains several pedigrees of the tribe of Levi, but on examination it becomes perfectly evident that the longest of these (ver. 33-3S), is made up of two of the others (ver. 22-2S), and yet contains particulars which are not to be found in either of them. Here, then, is room and necessity for the exercise of criticism, and such criticism has been exercised with great ingenuity by Lord Arthur Hervey, to whose labours we are indebted for a great deal of light on this difficult subject. We cannot better shew the use that. can be made of the kindred studies of chronology and genealogy for clearing doubtful points of history, than by laying before our readers one or two of his valu able and instructive suggestions.