What Does 1 Chronicles 2:23 Mean?

(23) **And he took . . . of Gilead.**—Rather, *And* *Geshur and Aram took the Havoth-jair from them*—*Kenath and her daughters, sixty cities: all these *(*were*)* sons of Machir, chief of Gilead.* **Geshur, and Aram.**—That is, the Aramean state of Geshur, north-west of Bashan, near Hermon and the Jordan, which was an independent kingdom in the age of David (2Samuel 3:3). The Geshurites “took the tent-villages of Jair *from them”*—*i.e.,* from the sons of Jair, or the Jairites, at what date is unknown. Comp. Deuteronomy 3:14-15, above cited. **With Kenath.**—The Hebrew particle before “Kenath” may be either the sign of the object of the verb, or the preposition “with.” In the latter case, the statement of the verse will be that the twenty-three villages of Jair, together with the (thirty-seven) places called Kenath and her daughters, amounting in all to sixty towns, were taken by the Geshurites. See Numbers 32:41-42, where it is said that Jair occupied the Havoth-jair, and “Nobah went and took Kenath and her daughters, and called it Nobah after his own name.” Kenath is the modern *Kanwat,* on the western slope of *Jebel* *Hauran.* It is difficult to reconcile all the different statements about the Havoth-jair. Judges 10:3-4, for example, speaks of Jair the Gileadite, who judged Israel twenty -two years, and “had thirty sons that rode on thirty ass colts,” and, moreover, possessed “thirty cities, which are called Havoth-jair unto this day.” Joshua 13:30 seems to make the Havoth-jair sixty towns. Comp. 1Kings 4:13; also 1Chronicles 2:21, where Hezron is sixty when he marries the Gileadite daughter of Machir. Of course the number of places included in the “camps of Jair” may have varied at different epochs. **All these belonged to the sons of Machir.**—Or, *all these were sons of Machir*—*i.e.,* the clans and families that came of the union of Hezron with the daughter of ‘Machir. (See Note on 1Chronicles 2:21; and Joshua 19:34.)