Matthew Henry on Numbers 26:5-51
This is the register of the tribes as they were now enrolled, in the same order that they were numbered in ch. 1. Observe,
I. The account that is here kept of the families of each tribe, which must not be understood of such as we call families, those that live in a house together, but such as were the descendants of the several sons of the patriarchs, by whose names, in honour of them, their posterity distinguished themselves and one another. The families of the twelve tribes are thus numbered: - Of Dan but one, for Dan had but one son, and yet that tribe was the most numerous of all except Judah, Num 26:42, Num 26:43. Its beginning was small, but its latter end greatly increased. Zebulun wa…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Numbers 26:7
These are the families of the Reubenites--the principal households, which were subdivided into numerous smaller families. Reuben had suffered great diminution by Korah's conspiracy and other outbreaks [Num 16:1].
John Gill on Numbers 26:8
And the sons of Pallu,.... Or son, the plural for the singular, Pallu having but one son, whose name was Eliab, the father of Dathan and Abiram; Numbers 26:9.
John Calvin on Numbers 26:8-18
And the sons of Pallu; Eliab. The curtailment which had occurred in the superior line is here introduced, either in exaltation of God's grace, because, notwithstanding so great a loss, the tribe of Reuben was still numerous; or else to mark the cause of its diminution, for it might otherwise have seemed strange that other tribes exceeded in numbers that one whose founder and parent was Jacob's first-born. But when he has narrated how the two sons of Eliab had been destroyed with their company, he briefly adverts to the clemency of God towards the sons of Korah, in that He spared them. And surely this was no common exercise of mercy not only to preserve them uninjured from the calamity, but a…
Read the whole note in the console
