Tola and Jair. These are the first of five minor Judges, the other three being named in Judges 12:8-15. Of the exploits of these Judges we know nothing. Only a few bare facts regarding their parentage, place of abode, years of rule, number of sons, and place of burial, are set down. Three of the five are elsewhere spoken of not as individuals but as clans, and the other two are naturally to be regarded in the same light. Probably they were not introduced by D, but by a later editor.
Judges 10:1. Tola is here the son of Puah. Elsewhere these are brothers, sons of Issachar, i.e. brother clans (Genesis 46:13; Numbers 26:23; 1 Chronicles 7:1). The site of Shemir is unknown.
Judges 10:3. Jair was a son, i.e. a clan, of Manasseh (Numbers 32:14; Deuteronomy 3:14.). Gilead was a mountainous region on the eastern side of the Jordan, well watered and wooded, providing rich pasturage. Havvoth-Jair means tent dwellings of Jair, a reminiscence of nomadic days, though encampments had now given place to cities. Jair's thirty sons are thirty settlements of the clan, just as our Colonies are the daughters of Britannia. Kamon may be the Kamun of Polybius (v. 70, 12).