The descendants of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Karmi, Hur and Shobal. – 1 Chronicles 4:1

Today's Scripture Reading (June 25, 2025): 1 Chronicles 4

I live in North America. Of late, those of us living in what has been called the New World have begun to recognize the debt that we owe to those who came before us on this land. I can trace my heritage in North America back about four hundred years, and while that seems like a long time, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the First Nations people who have inhabited the land for multiple times longer than my family. And so, although not everyone agrees, we take time to recognize those who have come before us and made their homes in this incredible land long before Europeans like me arrived. The form we use at various times of the year is as follows:

VantagePoint Community Church is located on Treaty 6 land, the traditional territory of the Cree, Saulteaux, Blackfoot, Métis, Dene, and Nakota Sioux.

We echo the words of those who have said, "We are all treaty people." As a church organization, we acknowledge that we benefit significantly from treaties with Canada's First Nations.

We share responsibility for respecting and honoring treaty relationships in this generation and those to come.  We recognize the teachings and wisdom of Indigenous elders and knowledge-keepers as we seek reconciliation with this place and all creation. Our commitment includes living in balance with the land and with nature.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I believe these words serve as a good reminder that we were not the first.

However, it does not appear that intelligent life originated on this land. Someone, and I don't know who emigrated from Asia (likely) first. They somehow crossed the Pacific Ocean and made a home in this new place. My ancestors made a home here 400 years ago, but the first visitors came thousands of years ago, and even they were visitors to this land.

As to how the first visitors got here, for a long time, we believed that these newcomers came to this place by crossing the Bering Land Bridge, a piece of land that is now submerged between Russia and Alaska in the Bering Sea. However, new scholarship throws doubt on that idea. The most recent scholarship suggests that the first visitors arrived across a different Pacific land bridge, or even a series of now-submerged islands south of the Bering Sea. It is not that no one came across the Bering land bridge, but rather that they were not the first visitors. I wish we had journals from these people so that we could experience how the first visitors arrived and the reason for such a drastic move. But we are left with a bit of a mystery as we try to piece together the early history of this world in which I live.

One of the things we must keep in mind as we read the history we call 1 Chronicles is that this history was written very late in Jewish history. It is the result of some written records, but it also incorporates a generous amount of oral history. These were stories that the people knew; they had told these stories around campfires and passed them from generation to generation.

We believe Chronicles was written by a man named Ezra, a priest who was an instrumental leader at the beginning of the Second Temple era (c. 400-300 B.C.E.). And so, he develops a bit of a shorthand. Ezra opens this section of Chronicles with the words "The descendants of Judah: Perez, Hezron, Karmi, Hur and Shobal" (1 Chronicles 4:1). He assumes that his reader will understand that he is not speaking of a group of brothers, but of fathers and sons. Judah was the father to Perez, Perez was the father of Hezron, and so on down the line.

However, because Ezra and the scribes who copied this book wrote it so far down the line, errors do creep in. I know some can't believe that I would say that, but the errors are minor and easily understood. In this case, the problem is with Karmi. This name looks like an error. We are not aware of a son of Hezron named Karmi (or sometimes Carmi). We do know that Hezron had a son named Caleb and that Caleb had a son named Hur. So, it seems that Karmi should be Caleb.

Or maybe we are missing something. And it would be so much easier if we had a journal written by Caleb to tell us the story rather than having to piece things together from a book written a thousand years later.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 5