1 Chronicles 2:4

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Tamar his daughter-in-law bore him Perez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Download a study sheet

One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.

This verse Autodidact and up

Study sheet (.html) Plain text (.txt)

A passage Seminary Student

Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.

Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.

Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

Word by word

More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →

Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →

פֶּ֣רֶץ

Perets

H6557

“Perez”

Noun, Proper

Appears 15× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 38:29

Full BDB Definition

Origin: the same as H6556

TWOT: None

Perez or Pharez = "breach" - twin son with Zarah of Judah by Tamar and ancestor of two families of Judah, the Hezronites and Hamulites; from the Hezronites came the royal line of David and Christ

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

12: words
10: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is פֶּ֣רֶץ Perez H6557 — appearing just 15 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

פֶּ֣רֶץ Perez H6557 occurs in 13 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

1 verb
7 nouns
1 adjective
1 preposition
2 particles

Verb forms

יָ֥לְדָה Qal · Perfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 17 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 12 Hebrew tokens and 16 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 1 Chronicles 2:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Matthew 1:3 Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. Perez became the father of Hezron. Hezron became the father of Ram.
Genesis 38:13–30 It was told Tamar, saying, "Behold, your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep."
Genesis 38:11 Then Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, "Remain a widow in your father's house, until Shelah, my son, is grown up;" for he said, "Lest he also die, like his brothers." Tamar went and lived in her father's house.
Numbers 26:13 of Zerah, the family of the Zerahites; of Shaul, the family of the Shaulites.
Numbers 26:20–21 The sons of Judah after their families were: of Shelah, the family of the Shelanites; of Perez, the family of the Perezites; of Zerah, the family of the Zerahites.
Ruth 4:12 and let your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, of the seed which Yahweh shall give you of this young woman.
Ruth 4:18 Now this is the history of the generations of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron,
1 Chronicles 9:4 Uthai the son of Ammihud, the son of Omri, the son of Imri, the son of Bani, of the children of Perez the son of Judah.

1 Chronicles 9:6 Of the sons of Zerah: Jeuel, and their brothers, six hundred ninety.
Nehemiah 11:4 In Jerusalem lived certain of the children of Judah, and of the children of Benjamin. Of the children of Judah: Athaiah the son of Uzziah, the son of Zechariah, the son of Amariah, the son of Shephatiah, the son of Mahalalel, of the children of Perez;
Nehemiah 11:24 Pethahiah the son of Meshezabel, of the children of Zerah the son of Judah, was at the king's hand in all matters concerning the people.
Luke 3:33 the son of Amminadab, the son of Aram, the son of Joram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah,

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew 1 Chronicles 2:4 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְתָמָר֙ כַּלָּת֔וֹ יָ֥לְדָה לּ֖וֹ אֶת פֶּ֣רֶץ וְאֶת זָ֑רַח כָּל בְּנֵ֥י יְהוּדָ֖ה חֲמִשָּֽׁה

Tamar his daughter-in-law bore him Perez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah were five.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Chronicles 2:4 Septuagint · lemma form

καί θαμαρ ὁ νύμφη αὐτός τίκτω αὐτός ὁ φαρες καί ὁ ζαρα πᾶς υἱός ἰουδά πέντε

And Thamar his daughter-in-law bore to him Phares, and Zara: all the sons of Juda were five.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Commentary

Notes on 1 Chronicles 2:4 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

1Ch 2:4 And Tamar his daughter in law bare him Pharez and Zerah. All the sons of Judah [were] five.

Ver. 4. And Tamar.] {See Trapp on "Mat 1:3"}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

2:4-5 The main ancestral line of David descends from Perez, one of the sons of Tamar, Judah’s widowed daughter-in-law. • Hamul, one of Perez’s sons, is ignored completely; the Chronicler might not have had information about him.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(4) Tamar.—Wife of Er. The story of her incest with Judah, the fruit of which was the twins Pharez (Heb., Perez) and Zerah (called Zarah, Gen_38:30; and Zara, Mat_1:3), is told in Gen_38:8-30.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And the sons of Zerah,.... The other twin of Judah:

Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara: five of them in all; the Targum calls them governors, and adds, on whom the spirit of prophecy dwelt; and in the Jewish chronology (n) they are said to prophesy in Egypt; and the four last are supposed to be the same with those in Kg1 4:31. See Gill on Kg1 4:31.

(n) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 20. p. 52.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Keil & Delitzsch

C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch

And the sons of Zerah,.... The other twin of Judah:

Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara: five of them in all; the Targum calls them governors, and adds, on whom the spirit of prophecy dwelt; and in the Jewish chronology (n) they are said to prophesy in Egypt; and the four last are supposed to be the same with those in Kg1 4:31. See Gill on Kg1 4:31.

(n) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 20. p. 52.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

And Tamar, his daughter in law I am amazed that he mentions the shame of David’s grandmother.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

1 Chronicles, in the Historical, opens this verse with 12 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Perets (“Perez”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “Perez” (Perets) shape what this verse is saying?
How does Genesis 38:29, which shares the word «Perez», read alongside this verse?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
«יָ֥לְדָה» is a Qal Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 12 Hebrew ↔ 16 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 6 words in this verse.
10 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 12 words in this verse.