1 Chronicles 5:25

"And they trespassed against the God of their fathers, and played the harlot after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God destroyed before them. And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and to the river Gozan, unto this day."

"Of him came the prince" (1 Chronicles 5:2). Despite the fact of the double portion, normally the right of the first-born, having been transferred to Joseph, "The Chronicler thought that the birthright of Joseph was nullified by the apostasy of North Israel,"[1] and that the blessing of the leadership of God's people was transferred to Judah.

"Pul, and Tilgath-pilneser" (1 Chronicles 5:6,26). The name of this ruler is given as Tiglath-pileser in 2 Kings 15:29. The variation in name could have come about by different pronunciations in diverse languages, or by difficulties some copyist might have found in copying it! If the latter had anything to do with it, this writer can identify with the problem; because copying all of these names has been indeed a painstaking and difficult assignment! "Pul and Tilgath-pilneser are the same man, Pul being his personal name which he retained as king of Babylon, and Tiglath-pileser his throne name as king of Assyria."[2]

"The Hagrites" (1 Chronicles 5:10). "These were the same as the Arabs."[3]

"Jeroboam" (1 Chronicles 5:17). "This was Jeroboam II."[4]

1 Chronicles 5:18-22 record an important victory over their enemies by the trans-Jordanic tribes, no record of which is found elsewhere in the Bible. This should warn us against assuming that the Bible records any such thing as a complete history of God's people. "There may be many other gaps in Samuel and Kings which Chronicles does not fill."[5]

Many of the events mentioned in this chapter are recorded in Genesis 25; Genesis 35; and Genesis 49; Exodus 6; Joshua 22:11, and in Numbers 1:20; 26:5.[6] See our comments under those references in our commentaries.

"The king of Assyria ... carried them away" (1 Chronicles 5:26). This was the captivity of the tribes of Israel which inhabited the country east of Jordan. `It took place eleven years prior to the fall of Samaria (722 B.C.), that is, in 733 BC."[7]