The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
The Children of Zilpah
Genesis 46:16–18 — The Children of Zilpah. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
16The sons of Gad: Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Areli.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ū·ḇə·nê ḡāḏ ṣip̄·yō·wn wə·ḥag·gî šū·nî wə·’eṣ·bōn ‘ê·rî wa·’ă·rō·w·ḏî wə·’ar·’ê·lî
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And the sons of Gad: Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli.
Where the English smooths the original
for the historian, before he proceeds to give an account of his sons by Rachel, finishes the account of all his sons by Leah and her maid: Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, and Eri, and Arodi, and Areli; in all seven; the same number is given, and in the same order, Numbers 26:15 .Gill names the structural logic — Leah’s and her maid’s lines are finished before Rachel’s — and confirms the seven-fold match with Numbers 26:15.
The seven sons of Gad recur in Numbers 26 , with the variants Zephon, Ozni, and Arod, for Ziphion, Ezbon, and Arodi; but they do not occur in Chronicles.Barnes lists the three Gadite name-variants between Genesis and Numbers — the textual seam this verse turns on.
And the sons of Gad; Ziphion , - " Expectation" (Gesenius); Zephon ( Numbers 26:15 ) - and Haggi , - " Festive" (Gesenius) - Shuni , - "Quiet" (Gesenius) - and Esbon , - "Toiling" (Murphy); named Ozni ( Numbers 26:16 ) - Eri , - "Guarding" (Gesenius) - and Arodi , - "Wild Ass" (Gesenius), "Rover" (Murphy), "Descendants" (Lange); styled Arod ( Numbers 26:17 ) - and Areli - "Lion of El" (Murphy), "Son of a Hero" (Gesenius), "Heroic" (Lange).The Pulpit Commentary supplies both the proposed meanings of each name and the Numbers 26 variant beside it — the fullest gloss the sources give on this verse.
16 . sons of Gad ] A different enumeration is found in 1 Chronicles 5:11-17 . Ziphion ] In Numbers 26:15 , Zephon . Zaphon a Gadite city, Joshua 13:27 .Cambridge adds the Chronicler’s differing Gadite list and links Ziphion/Zephon to the place-name Zaphon — name becoming geography, as in the Table of Nations.
17The children of Asher: Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi, Beriah, and their sister Serah. The sons of Beriah: Heber and Malchiel.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ū·ḇə·nê ’ā·šêr yim·nāh wə·yiš·wāh wə·yiš·wî ū·ḇə·rî·‘āh ’ă·ḥō·ṯām wə·śe·raḥ ū·ḇə·nê ḇə·rî·‘āh ḥe·ḇer ū·mal·kî·’êl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And the sons of Asher: Imnah, and Ishvah, and Ishvi, and Beriah, and Serah their sister; and the sons of Beriah: Heber, and Malchiel.
Where the English smooths the original
Serah their sister; who is called Sarah, Numbers 26:46 , and by the Septuagint here. She seems to have been a person of some note, being so particularly remarked in both places: and the sons of Beriah, Heber and Malchiel; this Beriah seems to be the youngest son of Asher, and yet had two sons; who, as the Targum of Jonathan adds, went down into Egypt; he must marry, and have sons when very young; the thing is not impossibleGill weighs both anomalies of the verse — Serah’s singular mention and Beriah’s precocious fatherhood.
Ishvi ] This name, omitted in Num., is probably due to the erroneous repetition of “Ishvah.” Serah their sister ] Notice the solitary mention of a female descendant in the younger generation. Heber, and Malchiel ] It is tempting to compare Ḥeber = “confederate” ( 1 Chronicles 4:18 ), with the Ḥabiri , and Malchiel with Milkili , the name of a prince of Southern Canaan in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets.Cambridge raises the Ishvah/Ishvi text-critical question, flags Serah as the lone granddaughter, and ventures the Amarna-tablet parallels for Heber and Malchiel.
The sister is everywhere Serach, though called Serah here, and Sarah in Numbers. The three documents all agree in the names of Heber and Malchiel, sons of Beriah.Ellicott tracks Serah’s three spellings and notes the one point of full agreement among Genesis, Numbers, and Chronicles — the grandsons Heber and Malchiel.
And the sons of Asher; Jimnah , - "Prosperity" (Gesenius) - and Ishuah , - "Even, Level" (Gesenius) - and Isui , - "Even," "Level" (Gesenius): they may have been twins - and Beriah , - "Gift" (Gesenius), "In Evil" (Murphy) - and Serah - "Abundance" (Gesenius), "Over- flow" (Murphy) - th eir sister: and the sons of Beriah; Heber, - "Fellowship" (Gesenius) - and Malchiel - "King of El" (Gesenius, Murphy), "My king is El" (Lange).The Pulpit Commentary glosses every name and offers, against Cambridge, the alternative that Ishuah and Isui were twins rather than a scribal doublet.
18These are the sons of Jacob born to Zilpah—whom Laban gave to his daughter Leah—sixteen in all.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’êl·leh bə·nê ’êl·leh lə·ya·‘ă·qōḇ wat·tê·leḏ ’eṯ- zil·pāh ’ă·šer- lā·ḇān nā·ṯan ḇit·tōw lə·lê·’āh šêš ‘eś·rêh nā·p̄eš
Literal — word-for-word from the original
These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and-these she-bore to Jacob: sixteen souls.
Where the English smooths the original
and these she bare unto Jacob, even sixteen souls; not that Zilpah bare sixteen children to Jacob, for she bore but two; but the children and grandchildren of these two with them made sixteen.Gill resolves the verse’s arithmetic: Zilpah “bore” sixteen only in the sense that her two sons’ descendants, counted with them, total sixteen.
Sixteen souls. —That is, Gad and his seven sons, Asher and his four sons, the two grandsons and Serach.Ellicott itemizes the sixteen — the cleanest accounting of how the sub-total is reached.
Though the fulfilling of promises is always sure, yet it is often slow. It was now 215 years since God had promised Abraham to make of him a great nation, ch. 12:2; yet that branch of his seed, to which the promise was made sure, had only increased to seventy, of whom this particular account is kept, to show the power of God in making these seventy become a vast multitude.Henry lifts the dry sub-total into its theological frame — these few souls are the slow-ripening seed of the promised nation.
all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten—Strictly speaking, there were only sixty-six went to Egypt; but to these add Joseph and his two sons, and Jacob the head of the clan, and the whole number amounts to seventy. In the speech of Stephen (Ac 7:14) the number is stated to be seventy-five; but as that estimate includes five sons of Ephraim and Manasseh (1Ch 7:14-20), born in Egypt, the two accounts coincide.JFB give the standard harmonization of the seventy (Genesis) and the seventy-five (Stephen, after the LXX) — the flagged crux of this unit, raised by the sources themselves.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
These three verses look like a family register — “the sons of Gad,” “the sons of Asher,” “the sons of Beriah” — but they function as the first muster of a nation. The names are not only persons; several are already in the form of clans. Arodi (H722) and Areli (H692) in v. 16 carry the gentilic ending -î, “an Arodite,” “an Arelite”; Strong’s reads H722 as “an Arodite or descendant of Arod.” When Numbers 26 takes up the very same names, it counts them as families — “the Arodites,” “the Erites” — so that Genesis 46 and Numbers 26 are the same list read first as genealogy and then as census. Keil & Delitzsch make the principle explicit: this list intends “not merely the sons and grandsons of Jacob, who were already born when he went down to Egypt, but … all the grandsons and great-grandsons who became the founders of mishpachoth, i.e., of independent families.” A man and a clan share one name because the clan came out of the man.
The structure is orderly. Gill notes that the historian “finishes the account of all his sons by Leah and her maid” before turning to Rachel — Zilpah’s two sons, Gad and Asher, are told together, each line headed by the same construct ū·ḇᵉnê, “and the sons of.” Within Asher’s line the Table nests one generation deeper, to Beriah’s two sons, exactly as the wider chapter nests Leah’s and Rachel’s branches. The result is a sub-total — sixteen — that will feed the grand seventy of vv. 26–27.
This unit is unusually candid about its own textual difficulties, and the synthesis should be too. Three of Gad’s seven sons are spelled differently in the muster of Numbers 26. Barnes lists them plainly: “the variants Zephon, Ozni, and Arod, for Ziphion, Ezbon, and Arodi.” Keil & Delitzsch sort the kinds of variation — some are “only different forms of the same name” (Ziphion/Zephon, Arodi/Arod), others are “different names of the same person” (Ezbon/Ozni). In Asher’s line the crux is the look-alike pair Ishvah and Ishvi: Cambridge judges Ishvi “probably due to the erroneous repetition of ‘Ishvah,’” while the Pulpit Commentary defends both as real men who “may have been twins.” Numbers 26:44 keeps only Ishvi; 1 Chronicles 7:30 keeps both. Even Serah is unstable on the page — Ellicott: “everywhere Serach, though called Serah here, and Sarah in Numbers.”
These are not embarrassments to hide but the ordinary working of parallel registers — the same families counted at different times for different purposes. Barnes offers the historian’s explanation: “the list in Numbers was drawn up at the time of the facts recorded, and that in Chronicles is extracted partly from Genesis.” The Word is sure; our task of laying its rolls side by side is fallible, and the commentators say so themselves.
Into a list of sons the Hebrew deliberately sets one daughter: wᵉ·śeraḥ ʾă·ḥōṯām, “and Serah their sister” (vv. 17). Cambridge marks the rarity — “the solitary mention of a female descendant in the younger generation” — and Gill draws the inference: she “seems to have been a person of some note, being so particularly remarked in both places,” Genesis and Numbers alike. Keil & Delitzsch reckon her, like Dinah, as a full and independent “soul” of the house of Jacob, counted “for some special reason, which is not particularly described.” The genealogy that elsewhere names only fathers and sons pauses to write down a granddaughter — a small but real witness, within a patriarchal register, that the daughters of the covenant are not forgotten in the count.
Verse 18 gathers the two lines into a sub-total and a theology. “These are the sons of Zilpah … sixteen souls (nephesh).” Ellicott itemizes the count — “Gad and his seven sons, Asher and his four sons, the two grandsons and Serach.” Gill guards the arithmetic: Zilpah “bare but two,” yet “the children and grandchildren of these two with them made sixteen,” for the matriarch’s “borne” reaches across three generations. And the branch traces to a handmaid: Laban “gave” Zilpah to Leah (cf. Genesis 29:24), and the covenant line runs through the maidservant’s sons as truly as through the wife’s.
Matthew Henry lifts the dry tally into its frame: “the fulfilling of promises is always sure, yet it is often slow. It was now 215 years since God had promised Abraham to make of him a great nation … yet that branch of his seed … had only increased to seventy … to show the power of God in making these seventy become a vast multitude.” Sixteen souls here, seventy in the whole house (vv. 26–27) — and out of that seventy, by the time of the Exodus, a nation no man could number. The smallness of the count is the point. Keil & Delitzsch even hear design in the final figure: the seventy is “the number 7 … multiplied by the number 10, as the seal of completeness … these 70 souls comprehended the whole of the nation of God.”
Tested against the rule that Scripture alone is the final authority, this roll of obscure names yields more than it first shows — offered as a reading to be weighed, not a verdict to be trusted.
God keeps names no one else would keep. Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, Areli — men who did nothing the narrative records, whose meanings the commentators can only guess at. Yet the Spirit wrote them down, twice and three times over, in Genesis, Numbers, and Chronicles. The God who numbers the seventy is the God who numbers the hairs of the head (Matthew 10:30); not one soul of the covenant family is too small to name.
The promise advances through the lowly. This whole branch — a third of Leah’s share of the house — descends from Zilpah, a handmaid given by Laban. The line of blessing does not run only through the favored wife; it runs through the maidservant’s sons too. As at Bethlehem, where a Moabitess and a harlot stand in Messiah’s line, so here: God builds His nation through the overlooked. Sixteen souls, slow-grown, are the seed Henry saw — the “vast multitude” already promised, not yet seen, carried into Egypt in the loins of a handmaid’s grandchildren.
This little census is the promise of Genesis 12:2 caught in mid-fulfillment: God said He would make Abraham “a great nation,” and here, 215 years on, the nation is sixteen souls in one branch and seventy in all — small, slow, and traced even through a slave-woman’s sons. The point of the roll is not its length but its completeness: every name kept, every soul counted, the whole seed gathered into Egypt so that what comes out at the Exodus will be unmistakably God’s doing and not man’s. The God who can name seventy can multiply them past numbering, and the same faithfulness that wrote down Areli and Serah will, in the fullness of time, write down the heirs of promise “in Christ” (Galatians 3:29). Tested against the text, this is the trajectory the passage sets; weigh it, and keep what the Word supports.
A genealogy is God’s ledger of the unforgotten: He keeps the names the world would lose — and that line is this tool’s reading, not a verse.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The seven sons of Gad in v. 16 reappear, name for name, in the wilderness census of Numbers 26:15–17 — counted there as the seven families of Gad. The Verifier carries the link on some of the rarest names in the Hebrew Bible: Shûwnî (Shuni) occurs in only 2 verses, Ḥaggî in only 2, ʿÊrî in only 2, ʾĂrōwḏî in only 2, ʾArʼêlî in only 2 — scarcity that makes the shared presence a clean textual quotation, not coincidence. This is also where the daleth-of-this-unit surfaces: three names shift spelling across the two rolls (Ziphion→Zephon, Ezbon→Ozni, Arodi→Arod), as Barnes and Keil & Delitzsch both note.
Genesis 46:16 · Numbers 26:15 · Numbers 26:16 · Numbers 26:17
basis: Hebrew↔Hebrew, rare shared lexemes per Verifier (Gen 46:16↔Num 26:15): H7764 Shûwnî (freq 2), H2291 Chaggî (freq 2), H1410 Gâd (freq 69); (↔Num 26:16): H6179 ʿÊrî (freq 2); (↔Num 26:17): H722 ʾĂrôwdî (freq 2), H692 ʾArʼêlî (freq 2). The freq-2 family-names make this a near-verbatim parallel roll, despite the three spelling-variants (Ziphion/Zephon, Ezbon/Ozni, Arodi/Arod).
The sons of Asher, Serah their sister, and Beriah’s two sons (v. 17) are reproduced in the Numbers 26:44–46 muster and again in the Asherite genealogy of 1 Chronicles 7:30–31. The Verifier ties the verses by the rare names that recur in both later rolls — Yishvâh (only 2 verses), Śeraḥ (only 3), Yishvî (4), Yimnâh (4) — and by Beriah’s sons Ḥeber and Malkîyʾêl. The lists are not identical: Numbers omits Ishvah (and Ishuah), Chronicles keeps both, and Serah is spelled three ways across them (Serah / Sarah / Serach), as Ellicott records. Where they fully agree is on the grandsons — “the three documents all agree in the names of Heber and Malchiel.”
Genesis 46:17 · Numbers 26:44 · Numbers 26:45 · Numbers 26:46 · 1 Chronicles 7:30 · 1 Chronicles 7:31
basis: Hebrew↔Hebrew, rare shared lexemes per Verifier (Gen 46:17↔1 Chr 7:30): H3438 Yishvâh (freq 2), H8294 Serach (freq 3), H3440 Yishvî (freq 4), H3232 Yimnâh (freq 4); (↔Num 26:44): H3232 Yimnâh, H3440 Yishvî, H1283 Bᵉrîyʿâh (freq 10), H836 ʾÂshêr (freq 41); (↔Num 26:45 / 1 Chr 7:31): H4439 Malkîyʾêl (freq 3), H2268 Cheber (freq 10), H1283 Bᵉrîyʿâh. The freq-2/3 names (Ishvah, Serah) make this a true parallel-list copy, with the list-divergences noted.
Two of Gad’s sons surface again in the fragmentary Gadite material of 1 Chronicles 7:7 — the Verifier finds ʾEtsbôwn (Ezbon, H675) shared between Genesis 46:16 and 1 Chronicles 7:7, a name that occurs in only 2 verses in all of Scripture. Because the name is so scarce, even this single shared lexeme is a firm textual link rather than a chance overlap. The Chronicler, gathering Israel’s tribes long after the Exile, reaches back to the same handful of Gadite ancestors set down here — though, as Barnes notes, the Gadite names “do not occur in Chronicles” in the full seven-fold form of Numbers, so the Chronicles witness to Gad is partial.
Genesis 46:16 · 1 Chronicles 7:7
basis: Hebrew↔Hebrew, single but rare shared lexeme per Verifier: H675 ʾEtsbôwn / Ezbon (freq 2 — only here and 1 Chr 7:7). A freq-2 proper name shared between two genealogies is quotation-grade; the link is real though the Chronicler’s Gadite list is fragmentary (Barnes notes Gad’s names ‘do not occur in Chronicles’ in full).
The sub-total of v. 18 (“sixteen souls,” nephesh, H5315) is one of four maternal totals that the chapter sums into seventy (vv. 26–27), a figure deliberately restated as the seed of the nation in Exodus 1:5 and Deuteronomy 10:22 — “all the souls … were seventy souls.” The Verifier links Genesis 46:18 to Exodus 1:5 and Deuteronomy 10:22 by the shared lexemes Yaʿăqōḇ (Jacob) and nephesh (soul) — but nephesh is a very common word (683 verses) and Jacob commoner still, so this is honestly a theme-and-formula link, not a rare-word quotation: the later texts recall the seventy-soul migration as the small beginning of the great nation, the very point Matthew Henry presses here.
Genesis 46:18 · Genesis 46:27 · Exodus 1:5 · Deuteronomy 10:22
basis: Hebrew↔Hebrew shared lexemes per Verifier (Gen 46:18↔Exod 1:5): H3290 Yaʿăqōḇ (freq 319), H5315 nephesh (freq 683); (↔Deut 10:22): H5315 nephesh only. No rare lexeme and no quotation claim — the link is the recurring ‘seventy souls’ formula and the migration motif, so it is tiered structural/thematic rather than verbal despite the auto-verifier’s shared-word match.
Verse 18 names the source of this whole branch: Zilpah, “whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter.” The phrasing is no passing aside — it deliberately recalls the marriage narratives, where the gift is first recorded. The Verifier ties Genesis 46:18 to Genesis 29:24 (“Laban gave Zilpah his maid unto his daughter Leah for an handmaid”) by an unusually rich cluster of shared names — Zilpâh (H2153, only 7 verses in all of Scripture), Lêʼâh (H3812), Lâbân (H3837), and the verb nāṯan, “gave” (H5414) — and to the birth-notices of Genesis 30:9–12 and the summary of Genesis 35:26 by the same rare name Zilpah with Leah and Jacob. The scarcity of Zilpah makes this a firm verbal link: the census of v. 18 is quoting its own back-story, reminding the reader that the handmaid handed over in Laban’s house (Genesis 29:24) is the mother of a sixteenth of the nation.
Genesis 46:18 · Genesis 29:24 · Genesis 30:9 · Genesis 30:12 · Genesis 35:26
basis: Hebrew↔Hebrew, rare shared lexeme cluster per Verifier (Gen 46:18↔Gen 29:24): H2153 Zilpâh (freq 7), H3812 Lêʼâh (freq 32), H3837 Lâbân (freq 47), H5414 nāṯan (gave), H1323 bath; (↔Gen 30:9/30:12/35:26): H2153 Zilpâh, H3812 Lêʼâh, H3290 Yaʿăqōḇ. The freq-7 name Zilpah anchoring the same ‘Laban gave Zilpah to Leah’ clause makes this a genuine verbal back-reference, not a thematic echo.
The summary that frames this branch — Zilpah, “whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter” — belongs to the count of the house of Jacob that Stephen recalls in his Sanhedrin speech: “Joseph sent and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls” (Acts 7:14). Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy say seventy; Stephen, following the Septuagint, says seventy-five. JFB give the standard harmonization — the larger figure “includes five sons of Ephraim and Manasseh … born in Egypt,” which the LXX adds at Genesis 46:20, “so the two accounts coincide.” Keil & Delitzsch lay out the LXX interpolation in full. Because this is a New Testament Greek text reaching back to a Hebrew census, the Verifier finds no shared original-language lexeme — the connection rests on the disputed number, not a word — so it is left flagged: real and ancient, but a contested-provenance link to be argued, not asserted.
Genesis 46:18 · Genesis 46:27 · Acts 7:14
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): the Verifier finds NO shared original-language lexeme between Gen 46:18 and Acts 7:14 — the link rests on the seventy/seventy-five textual variant, not vocabulary. Stephen’s ‘75’ follows the LXX (which adds Joseph’s descendants at Gen 46:20); the MT/BSB read ‘70’. A genuine but disputed-number provenance, flagged to keep it honest (cf. the editorial rule to flag debated NT-quotation provenance).
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
This census is the count of the family that goes down into Egypt — the seventy souls (vv. 26–27) of whom these sixteen are part. It is the deliberate planting of the promised seed in the land of the coming bondage, so that the Exodus might display the saving arm of God. The pattern is Christ’s own: Israel God’s son is “called … out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1), a word Matthew takes up for the child Jesus carried down to Egypt and brought up again (Matthew 2:15). The handful of named souls here is the beginning of the people in whom, and out of whom, the true Son will be summoned. Matthew Henry hears the design in the smallness: these seventy are kept on record “to show the power of God in making these seventy become a vast multitude” — the multitude from which Messiah comes.
Genesis 46:18 · Genesis 46:27 · Hosea 11:1 · Matthew 2:15
A full third of Leah’s portion of the house of Israel descends not from the wife but from her handmaid Zilpah, “whom Laban gave to Leah.” The covenant line is built, here, through a slave-woman’s sons — and this is the way of God all through Scripture, who chooses “the things which are despised … and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28). The genealogy of Christ Himself will gather in Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and “her that had been the wife of Urias” (Matthew 1:3–6) — the overlooked and the outsider woven into Messiah’s line. The sixteen souls of Zilpah are an early token of the same grace: the King who comes will be no respecter of persons, and His people will be gathered from the low as well as the high.
Genesis 46:17 · Genesis 46:18 · Matthew 1:3 · 1 Corinthians 1:28
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), dedicated to the public domain (CC0). At v. 18 the BSB renders the singular closing word nephesh (“soul, living being”) as “in all”; the literal rendering here restores “souls,” the word the whole house of Jacob is counted by in vv. 26–27 and in Exodus 1:5 / Deuteronomy 10:22.
The named voices are quoted verbatim from public-domain commentaries via Biblehub (Ellicott, Henry, Barnes, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Poole, Gill, Geneva, Cambridge, Pulpit Commentary, Keil & Delitzsch). This is a genealogical and census unit, so the natural specialist voices are the text-critics and harmonizers (Barnes, Keil & Delitzsch, Cambridge, Ellicott, the Pulpit Commentary) rather than the homiletes; Matthew Poole leaves all three verses without comment, and Spurgeon’s verse-by-verse strength is the Psalms (Treasury of David), so he is rightly absent here.
Transliterations, literal renderings, divergence notes, and word-notes are this tool’s own work (⚙), built on the supplied Berean/Strong’s parses — careful but fallible; check against BDB/HALOT. The name-meanings (Ziphion “Expectation,” Haggi “Festive,” Areli “Lion of El,” and so on) are the commentators’ proposals — the Pulpit Commentary itself stacks rival glosses (Gesenius, Murphy, Lange) for several names, which is the right signal that these etymologies are reconstructions, not certainties. Two cautions on method: (1) the Genesis/Numbers/Chronicles rolls genuinely disagree in places — three Gadite names shift spelling (Ziphion/Zephon, Ezbon/Ozni, Arodi/Arod), Serah is spelled three ways (Serah/Sarah/Serach), and the lists differ on whether Asher had Ishvah and Ishvi or only Ishvi; the verbal threads above are tiered “confirmed” on the strength of the genuinely rare shared names (the freq-2 family-names), with the divergences flagged in the notes, not smoothed over. (2) The one cross-reference left flagged — the seventy of v. 18/27 against Stephen’s seventy-five in Acts 7:14 — is flagged on purpose: it is a cross-Testament link with no shared original-language lexeme, resting on the contested number itself; JFB and Keil & Delitzsch both trace the difference to the Septuagint’s additional Josephite descendants, real and ancient but argued rather than asserted. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)