7 The sons of Bela: Ezbon, and Uzzi, and Uzziel, and Jerimoth, and Iri, five; heads of fathers' houses, mighty men of valor; and they were reckoned by genealogy twenty-two thousand thirty-four.
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The lists here are remarkably different from those in marginal references Probably the persons here mentioned were not literally "sons," but were among the later descendants of the founders, being the chief men of the family at the time of David's census.
And the sons of Bela; Ezbon, and Uzzi, and Uzziel, and Jerimoth, and Iri, five,.... These are thought by some to be the grandsons of Bela, because of the different names in 1-Chronicles 8:3,
heads of the house of their fathers, mighty men of valour; principal men in their tribe and families, and of great courage:
and were reckoned by their genealogies twenty and two thousand and thirty and four; who sprung from these men.
the sons of Bela--Each of them was chief or leader of the family to which he belonged. In an earlier period seven great families of Benjamin are mentioned (Numbers 26:38), five of them being headed by these five sons of Benjamin, and two descended from Bela. Here five families of Bela are specified, whence we are led to conclude that time or the ravages of war had greatly changed the condition of Benjamin, or that the five families of Bela were subordinate to the other great divisions that sprang directly from the five sons of the patriarch.
The five heads of fathers'-houses called sons of Bela are not sons in the proper sense of the word, but more distant descendants, who, at the time when this register was made up, were heads of the five groups of related households of the race of Bela. חילים גּבּורי is synonymous with חיל גּבּורי, 1-Chronicles 7:9, and is a plural, formed as if from a nomen compositum, which arose after the frequent use of the words as they are bound together in the status constructus had obscured the consciousness of the relation between them.
Heads - Each of them head of that family to which he belonged. For it may seem by comparing this with 1-Chronicles 8:3, &c. that these were not the immediate sons of Belah, but his Grand - children descended each from a several father.
*More commentary available at chapter level.