1Ch 2:21-35

The Authorized Version is not justified in substituting children for the Hebrew "sons;" the object evidently being to make this statement reconcilable with 1Ch 2:34, which says that Sheshan had only daughters. The difficulty can be removed, possibly, by supposing that Ahlai died (yet see 1Ch 11:41), or that, at the time to which 1Ch 2:34 refers, only daughters were in question. Wall’s conjecture, that Ahlai of 1Ch 2:31 is the same with Attai of 1Ch 2:35, would have more probability if aleph were not the initial letter of the one, and ayin of the other. Still, as all the other "sons" of this passage mean sons strictly, it would be unlikely that sons of Sheshan only should mean "grandsons." The genealogy now proceeds through Sheshan’s daughter, name not given (unless possibly Ahlai), married to his Egyptian servant Jarha, down to (1Ch 2:41) Elishama, at the twentieth generation from Jerahmeel. To this, however, the Septuagint, adds one generation more, καὶ Ἐλισμὰ ἐγέννησε τὸν Ἰσμαήλ. The Egyptian servant Jarha is not heard of elsewhere; that he was enfranchised before his marriage with Sheshan’s daughter is likely enough (Deu 23:8; 1Sa 30:11). The language of the end of 1Ch 2:33, These were the sons of Jerahmeel, would seem to exclude the following thirteen descendants of Jarha and Sheshan’s daughter from the genealogy. Yet this is scarcely likely to be the intention, which perhaps was satisfied with simply marking a distinction by the pause.