Moses had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Its setting among the genealogies answers the need after the exile for hereditary records for assigning land and establishing temple duties. Taken with the next verse, it identifies Shebuel son of Gershom as the grandson of Moses.
Shebuel and Jonathan are the same man. Jonathan, the young Levite who left Bethlehem and became priest to Micah in Mount Ephraim and then priest to the tribe of Dan at Laish, was therefore a descendant of Moses and not of Manasseh as written in Judges 18:30. The name Manasseh there comes from the Hebrew word for Moses by the insertion of a single letter. His posterity continued in that irregular priesthood at Dan until the captivity of the country by the Philistines.
Moses had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Its setting among the genealogies answers the need after the exile for hereditary records for assigning land and establishing temple duties. Taken with the next verse, it identifies Shebuel son of Gershom as the grandson of Moses.
Shebuel and Jonathan are the same man. Jonathan, the young Levite who left Bethlehem and became priest to Micah in Mount Ephraim and then priest to the tribe of Dan at Laish, was therefore a descendant of Moses and not of Manasseh as written in Judges 18:30. The name Manasseh there comes from the Hebrew word for Moses by the insertion of a single letter. His posterity continued in that irregular priesthood at Dan until the captivity of the country by the Philistines.