And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zerah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul.
The sons of Judah. The five sons here enumerated were previously mentioned (Genesis 38:1-30); but to these are added the names of "Hezron and Hamul," grandsons of Judah. Upon this little clause a grand objection has been raised by Dr. Colenso to the historical credibility of this book, the writer of which, it is alleged, affirms that they were born in Canaan; and this is, by an elaborate calculation, demonstrated to have been an impossibility.
Now, without entering into any conjectures as to the probable age of Judah when he married, for which the sacred history does not furnish any certain data, it is readily admitted that, as the whole period of Jacob's sojourn in Canaan, between his return from Mesopotamia and his emigration to Egypt, was only about 30 years, this interval was too brief for Judah's arriving at a marriageable age-for his marrying Bathshua, who bore him three sons, all of whom successively reached maturity, then for the birth of a fourth son, who in his turn became the father of two sons. If the history contained anything to countenance this mass of impossibilities within the compass of a single year, as alleged, it would indeed be unworthy of credit. It is evident, however, that Pharez must have been still an immature youth at the time of the emigration from Canaan (see the note at Genesis 38:1-30), and that his sons, Hezron and Hamul, instead of coming into Egypt, were born only after the settlement in that country.
The fact is, that the clause under review forms not a part of the continuous narrative, but is a parenthetical sentence, separated in our English translation by a full period, and inserted to give the information, that as two of Judah's sons, Er and Onan, had died without issue, their place was supplied by Hezron and Hamul, whom Providence raised up and substituted in their stead, to be heads of Israelite families. This view of the isolated and independent position of the clause is corroborated by its grammatical structure. [The Hebrew text has wayihªyuw (H1961); the Septuagint version has: kai (G2532) egenonto (G1096) and 'were:' this little word, which Celeste entirely overlooked, serving to mark the sentence as complete in itself, and to distinguish it from all the other verses in this chapter, where, in enumerating the other descendants of Jacob, a different phraseology is used-as, for instance (Genesis 46:13), the sons of Isaachar, Tola, etc., not were Tola, etc.]