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{"id":18198,"date":"2016-06-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2979"},"modified":"2016-06-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T00:00:00","slug":"benjamin-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/benjamin-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

W<\/span>illiam Johnstone (Chronicles and Exodus<\/em><\/a>) offers an explanation for the nearly verbatim repetition a portion of the genealogy of Benjamin in 1 Chronicles 8:29-38 and 9:35-44. The repeated portion \u201cconcerns, on the one hand, the population of Jerusalem, and, on the other, the family of Saul.\u201d Both are Benjamite: Jerusalem is a Benjamite city (cf. Joshua 18:11-28) and Saul a Benjamite king. The two lists\u2014of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the family of Saul\u2014fit into the general Benjamite genealogy of chapter 8 (112-3).<\/p>\n

Yet \u201cboth receive a supra-Benjamite significance. In the immediately ensuing chapter (1 Chron. 10), in which the Chronicler begins his historical narrative proper, tracing the theme of guilt and atonement, it is Saul, the Benjamite, who provides the Chronicler with his first example of ma\u2019al<\/em>.\u201d Yet this first breakdown is associated with Jerusalem, \u201cthe place where the new centralized atonement cult will be introduced.\u201d The message is: \u201cwhere Israel falls into guilt, there God provides the means of atonement. The reason that Benjamin appears last in the tribal genealogies is, therefore, not merely that Benjamin, as one of the last survivors, constitutes an enclosing bracket around the more vulnerable northern tribes; rather, it is that Benjamin provides the Chronicler with the double link of both guilt and atonement forward into this account of Israel\u2019s history\u201d (113).<\/p>\n

This explains too the climax of the genealogy with the gatekeepers of the temple treasury: \u201cma\u2019al<\/em>, in the legislation of Lev. 5.15-26, concerns precisely the violation of the holy things, the supreme, tangible token of Israel\u2019s rendering of its duty towards God as the giver of the land and the possibilities of life within it. It is to the storehouses of the Temple that such holy things were brought to the Levites to confirm that Israel\u2019s duty towards God had been completely fulfilled\u201d (113-4). In short, the genealogy ends with a description of an ideal Israel\u2014the Lord\u2019s holy things brought into His house, guarded by gatekeepers who prevent ma\u2019al<\/em> and who maintain the holiness of the temple.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"