First Book of Chronicles,

Introductory Note.

The beginning of Chronicles is not a History up to the end of Ch. 9, which closes a series of Pedigrees of noble families in Israel, but as they are not arranged in Chronological order, and are full of repetitions, it is almost impossible to comprehend them as to historical import. Only here and there we see curious and interesting historical and ethnologic comments inserted, as in Ch. 4, vv. 21-23, I Chron. and Ch. 4, v. 39, Ch. 5, all through, Ch. 7, vv. 3-5, Ch. 8, vv. 8-9, Ch. 9, vv. 1-20, &c., intimating that a Negro population preceded the Hebrews, at least in the South-Eastern part of the country they conquered, and alluding to various colonizing expeditions not mentioned in the history of the judges or Kings. But, owing to the chronological confusion of the author, it is difficult to fix the dates. Some were evidently close after Joshua, others in the anarchy after his death till the rise of Samuel and Saul, and others even after the period of Nebukadnezzar's ravages. Then the Pedigrees sometimes start at Sinai, and sometimes at the period of Samuel and David; others again in the days of Ezra, and Nehemiah, as far as I can trace, and at the end of them we hark back to the defeat of Saul at Gilboa, beginning at Ch. 10, which begins the real History, but of the House of David only, not of Israel as a Race.

The preceding pedigrees were probably compiled by one of the Ezras or Nehemiahs to settle the claims to restoration of offices and properties amongst the returning Transports who accompanied them back from Babel, and so were never put into chronoloical order, and were copied by the historian from the Records alluded to by the Second Nehemiah, as preserved in the caskets of the temple—F.F.