What Does 1 Chronicles 6:39 Mean?

(39-43) The pedigree of Asaph the Gershonite, traced back through thirteen names to Levi. That of Heman names twenty ancestors for the same period of time. This is one more illustration of the common usage of overleaping names in these genealogies. (39) **His brother Asaph.**—Asaph was Heman’s brother (1) as a Levite; (2) as a choir-master. The striking agreement of the line of Heman with that of the Kohathites, detailed in 1Chronicles 6:22-28 above, has led critics to look for a like coincidence between the line of Asaph as given here, and that of the Gershonites in 1Chronicles 6:20-21. There, however, we have only seven names, here there are thirteen. Still we observe that in the former passage the three names, Jahath, Zimmah, and Zerah appear in *the same order of lineal descent* from Gershon as in the present list; while the Adaiah of 1Chronicles 6:41 obviously answers to the Iddo of 1Chronicles 6:21, and Ethni (1Chronicles 6:41) is in Hebrew writing not unlike Jeaterai; and we are already familiar with the fact that genealogies sometimes recur in abbreviated forms. (Comp. Ezra 7:1-5, with the line of Aaron in the present chapter.) Upon the whole, therefore, if the suggested identifications be correct, it appears that Asaph’s pedigree has really been partially anticipated in 1Chronicles 6:20-21.