The penchant for pedigrees and genealogical registers, made up from a mixture of genealogico-historical and ethnologico-statistical elements, is a characteristic feature of Judaism; along with the thing the word YX# also first came into use during the later times.  Compendious histories are written in the form of TLDWT and YWX#YN.  The thread is thin and inconspicuous, and yet apparently strong and coherent; one does not commit oneself to much, and yet has opportunity to introduce all kinds of interesting matter.  Material comes to one’s hand, given a beginning and an end, the bridge is soon completed.  Another expression of the same tendency is the inclination to give a genealogical expression to all connections and associations of human society whatsoever, to create artificial families on all hands and bring them into blood relationship, as if the whole of public life resolved itself into a matter of cousinship,—­an inclination indicative of the times of political stagnation then prevalent.  We hear of the families of the scribes at Jabesh, of the potters and gardeners and byssus-workers, of the sons of the goldsmiths, apothecaries, and fullers, these corporations being placed on the same plane with actual families.  The division into classes of the persons engaged in religious service is merely the most logical development of this artificial system which is applied to all other social relations as well.

Proceeding now to a fuller examination of the contents of 1 Chron i.-ix. and other texts connected with that, we have here, apart from the first chapter, which does not demand further attention, an ethno-genealogical survey of the twelve tribes of Israel, which is based mostly on the data of the Priestly Code (Genesis xlvi.; um. xxvi.), expanded now more now less.  But while the statements of the Priestly Code have to hold good for the Mosaic period only, those of Chronicles have also to apply to the succeeding ages,—­those, for example, of Saul and David, of Tiglath-Pileser and Hezekiah.  As early as the time of the judges, however, very important changes had taken place in the conditions.  While Dan continued to subsist with difficulty, Simeon and Levi had been completely broken up (Genesis xlix. 7); in the Blessing of Moses the latter name denotes something quite different from a tribe, and the former is not even so much as named, although the enumeration is supposed to be complete; in David’s time it had already been absorbed by families of mingled Judaic and Edomitic descent in the district where it had once had independent footing.  Eastward of Jordan Leah’s first-born had a similar fate, although somewhat later.  After it has been deposed from its primacy in Genesis xlix. and twitted in Judges v. with its brave words unaccompanied by corresponding deeds, the faint and desponding wish is expressed in Deuteronomy xxxiii. 6 that “Reuben may live and not die,” and King Mesha is unaware that any other than the Gadite