1 Chronicles 5:25

And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(25, 26) The captivity of the three eastern tribes. A fuller account may be read in 2Kings 17:6-18.

(25) They transgressed against the God of their fathers.—Rather, were faithless or untrue to Him (Joshua 7:1, “committed a trespass”).

Went a whoring after the gods of the people (peoples).—Jehovah was the true Lord (Ba’al) and Husband (Ish) of Israel. Apostasy from Him is, in the prophetic language, whoredom. (See Hos. 1 Chronicles 1, 2, especially 2:16, and 1 Chronicles 3) According to Kings 50100 the fatal sin of Israel evinced itself: (1) in the worship of the high places; (2) in adoration of the heavenly bodies, and the productive powers of nature; (3) in the practice of magic and divination.

The people of the land, whom God had destroyed before them.—Comp. Numbers 21:21-35, and Joshua 12:6; Psalm 135:10-12. The reduction of the Canaanites was, to the mind of the chronicler, a Divine work. He is not thinking only of such extraordinary events as were told of the battle of Beth-boron (Joshua 10:11-14). All the incidents of the conquest were the Lord’s doing, whether He acted through the agency of sun and moon, or storm and tempest, or the good swords of Joshua and his warriors. From the same standpoint, he ascribes the Assyrian invasions to a direct impulse from the God of Israel (1Chronicles 5:26). The Assyrian kings themselves were wont to regard their campaigns as a fulfilment of the bidding of their Divine protectors, Istar, Bel, and other imaginary beings. It was not given to them to attain to the higher vision of the Hebrew prophets and priests, who saw but one guiding and controlling power at the summit of the world. (Comp. Isaiah 10:5-15.)

Benson Commentary

1 Chronicles 5:25. They transgressed against the God of their fathers — Had they kept close to God and their duty, they would have continued to enjoy both their ancient lot and their new conquests; but lying upon the borders, and conversing with the neighbouring nations, they learned their idolatrous usages, and transmitted the infection to the other tribes: and for this God had a controversy with them.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-26 Genealogies. - This chapter gives some account of the two tribes and a half seated on the east side of Jordan. They were made captives by the king of Assyria, because they had forsaken the Lord. Only two things are here recorded concerning these tribes. 1. They all shared in a victory. Happy is that people who live in harmony together, who assist each other against the common enemies of their souls, trusting in the Lord, and calling upon him. 2. They shared in captivity. They would have the best land, not considering that it lay most exposed. The desire of earthly objects draws to a distance from God's ordinances, and prepares men for destruction.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

"Baal-Hermon," "Senir" Deuteronomy 3:9, and "Mount Hermon," are here not so much three names of the one great snow-clad eminence in which the Anti-Lebanon terminates toward the south, as three parts of the mountain - perhaps the "three summits" in which it terminates.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

18-22. Hagarites—or, "Hagarenes," originally synonymous with "Ishmaelites," but afterwards applied to a particular tribe of the Arabs (compare Ps 83:6).

Jetur—His descendants were called Itureans, and the country Auranitis, from Hauran, its chief city. These, who were skilled in archery, were invaded in the time of Joshua by a confederate army of the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half Manasseh, who, probably incensed by the frequent raids of those marauding neighbors, took reprisals in men and cattle, dispossessed almost all of the original inhabitants, and colonized the district themselves. Divine Providence favoured, in a remarkable manner, the Hebrew army in this just war.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And they transgressed against the God their fathers,.... Against his law, will, word, and ordinances, not only the half tribe of Manasseh, hut the Reubenites and Gadites also:

and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them; that is, committed idolatry, which is spiritual fornication or whoredom; worshipped the idols either of the Amorites, who were destroyed by the Lord to make way for their first settlement; or of the Ishmaelites, whom they conquered, and whose land they dwelt in to the captivity.

Geneva Study Bible

And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

25, 26. The Captivity of the Trans-Jordanic Tribes

25. they transgressed] R.V. they trespassed. The Hebrew verb has a special reference to unlawful or idolatrous worship and also to the violation of a consecrated thing; cp. Joshua 22:16; Joshua 22:20; Joshua 22:31.

the people of the land] R.V. the peoples of the land. Cp. R.V. Preface, pp. vi, vii.

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 25, 26. - The "transgressors" here described include manifestly not this half-tribe Manasseh alone, but the other tribes of Israel of whom this chapter has treated. Verse 25. - And they went a-whoring (וַיַּזְנוּ); so 2 Chronicles 21:11, 13. This verb, in one form of its root or another, occurs as many as ninety-seven times in the Pentateuch, Judges, Joshua, Psalms, Proverbs; and prophets, for only twice in Kings and four times in Chronicles, in all the rest of the Old Testament writings. 1 Chronicles 5:25

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

1 Chronicles 5:25 and 1 Chronicles 5:26 form the conclusion of the register of the two and a half trans-Jordanic tribes. The sons of Manasseh are not the subject to ויּמעלוּ, but the Reubenites and Manassites, as is clear from 1 Chronicles 5:26. These fell away faithlessly from the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God had destroyed before them, i.e., the Amorites or Canaanites. "And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of the Assyrian kings Pul and Tiglath-pilneser, and he (this latter) led them away captives to Halah and Habor," etc. את־רוּח ויּער, Lavater has rightly rendered, "in mentem illis dedit, movit eos, ut expeditionem facerent contra illos;" cf. 2 Chronicles 21:16. Pul is mentioned as being the first Assyrian king who attacked the land of Israel, cf. 2 Kings 15:19. The deportation began, however, only with Tiglath-pileser, who led the East-Jordan tribes into exile, 2 Kings 15:29. To him ויּגלם sing. refers. The suffix is defined by the following acc., וגו לרעוּבני; ל is, according to the later usage, nota acc.; cf. Ew. 277, e. So also before the name חלח, "to Halah," i.e., probably the district Καλαχήνη (in Strabo) on the east side of the Tigris near Adiabene, to the north of Nineveh, on the frontier of Armenia (cf. on 2 Kings 17:6). In the second book of Kings (1 Chronicles 15:29) the district to which the two and a half tribes were sent as exiles is not accurately determined, being only called in general Asshur (Assyria). The names in our verse are there (2 Kings 17:6) the names of the districts to which Shalmaneser sent the remainder of the ten tribes after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel. It is therefore questionable whether the author of the Chronicle took his account from an authority used by him, or if he names these districts only according to general recollection, in which the times of Shalmaneser and of Tiglath-pileser are not very accurately distinguished (Berth.). We consider the first supposition the more probable, not merely because he inverts the order of the names, but mainly because he gives the name הרא instead of "the cities of Media," as it is in Kings, and that name he could only have obtained from his authorities. חבור is not the river Chaboras in Mesopotamia, which falls into the Euphrates near Circesium, for that river is called in Ezekiel כּבר, but is a district in northern Assyria, where Jakut mentions that there is both a mountain Χαβώρας on the frontier of Assyria and Media (Ptolem. vi. 1), and a river Khabur Chasaniae, which still bears the old name Khbur, rising in the neighbourhood of the upper Zab, near Amadijeh, and falling into the Tigris below Jezirah. This Khbur is the river of Gozan (vide on 2 Kings 17:6). The word הרא appears to be the Aramaic form of the Hebrew הר, mountains, and the vernacular designation usual in the mouths of the people of the mountain land of Media, which is called also in Arabic el Jebl (the mountains). This name can therefore only have been handed down from the exiles who dwelt there.