2 Chronicles 15:9 - Exposition

He gathered . As the following verses go on to show, Ass wisely gathered all beneath his sway, with a view to sacrifice and to record anew hallowed resolve as a nation. The strangers . It is a significant comment on the estranging effect of religious schism (for the schism was religious even beyond what it was national ) that so comparatively soon these of the tribes of Israel should have become called "strangers" by the side of Judah and Benjamin. They fell to him … in abundance . Another significant comment on the sameness of human nature in all time; the weak and the multitude will see, learn, do duty, less under pure conviction of right, than under the strong commanding influence of observation of where and with whom success goes, even if that success necessitate the owning of the Divine blessing as its cause ( 2 Chronicles 11:16 and 1 Chronicles 12:19 ). It should be noted, not for the sake of satire of human nature, but for the inculcation of the infinite importance of godly influence and example. Out of Simeon (see also 2 Chronicles 34:6 ). The "lines" of the Simeonites fell to them originally ( Joshua 19:1 ) within Judah. The difficulty suggested by their being called, apparently, "strangers," and being certainly classed with the comers from "Ephraim and Manasseh," may be variously overcome, either by supposing that they had become more estranged from Judah in religious position than it was possible to them to have become in merely geographical; or that they had in some degree outgrown their own proper habitat, and had to some extent colonized a more northerly region ( Genesis 49:7 ); or that, though, indeed, our compiler's composition undoubtedly places the Simeonites summoned, among the strangers, through mentioning them after Ephraim and Manasseh, yet this location of their name be held accidental, rather than due to special design.