1 Chronicles 25:4–5
Heman's sons and daughters
Heman has fourteen sons and three daughters. The last nine sons' names in 25:4 can be read together as a short Hebrew prayer. The witnesses agree on the names; their reading as a prayer is interpretation.
Same letters, different readings: the consonants agree, but ancient readers vocalized or interpreted them differently
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains it · ✕ does not · ❝ quotes part of it · ⓘ reports on manuscripts · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Every witness, in order
Composed c. 4th century BC (debated)
Original Chronicles
No original survives; no certain Qumran copy of 1 Chronicles.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint, 1 Paraleipomena (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Dieu avait donné à Hêman quatorze fils, outre trois filles
One Greek text (Vaticanus type) via Giguet's French; not checked against a critical Greek edition.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
filios quatuordecim, et filias tres
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
חֲנַנְיָה חֲנָנִי אֱלִיאָתָה גִדַּלְתִּי וְרֹמַמְתִּי עֶזֶר יָשְׁבְּקָשָׁה מַלּוֹתִי הוֹתִיר מַחֲזִיאוֹת
"Be gracious to me, LORD, be gracious to me; you are my God; I have magnified and exalted [your] help; sitting in distress I spoke; give abundant visions" (one proposed reading)
Names in 25:4.
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three daughters.
What changed, and why
Whether these were real names, or the opening words of a psalm turned into a list, is debated. The reading as a prayer depends on small changes of vowels.
What the evidence shows
- All witnesses name 14 sons and 3 daughters.
- The names form a hidden prayer.
Sources
- E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 3rd ed. (2012)
Related lessons
- Musicians and Prophetic Music →David and the army leaders set apart the sons of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun "to prophesy with harps, with psalteries, and with cymbals." Heman, "the king's seer," has fourteen sons and three daughters, all musicians. Two hundred eighty-eight trained singers are divided by lot into twenty-four groups of twelve, "as well the small as the great, the teacher as the scholar."
- Investigation: Priestly Courses, Singers and Their Afterlife →The twenty-four priestly courses of 1 Chronicles 24 organized temple service in the Second Temple period. They appear in Qumran calendars, in Luke's story of Zechariah, in Josephus, and, after the temple's destruction, in synagogue inscriptions and liturgical poems that kept their memory alive for centuries.