I Chronicles 1:28

The sons of Abraham,.... The famous and well known ancestor of the Jews; of Ishmael his firstborn, and his posterity; of his sons by Keturah; and of Isaac and his sons, an account is given from hence to the end of Ch1 1:34 entirely agreeing with that in Gen 25:1. . 1 Chronicles 1:35 ch1 1:35 ch1 1:35 ch1 1:35The sons of Esau,.... The firstborn of Isaac; his posterity are named in this and the two following verses, as in Gen 36:1 only it should be observed, that Timna, Ch1 1:36 is not the name of a man, but was the concubine of Eliphaz, the eldest son of Esau, and the mother of Amalek, Gen 36:12, and so in the Arabic version it is read,"and Timna, which was the concubine of Eliphaz, the son of Esau, bare him Amalek;''and so the Alexandrian copy of the Septuagint.

All nations but the seed of Abraham are already shaken off from this genealogy: they have no part nor lot in this matter. The Lord's portion is his people. Of them he keeps an account, knows them by name; but those who are strangers to him he beholds afar off. Not that we are to conclude that therefore no particular persons of any other nation but the seed of Abraham found favour with God. It was a truth, before Peter perceived it, that in every nation he that feared God and wrought righteousness was accepted of him. Multitudes will be brought to heaven out of all nations (Rev 7:9), and we are willing to hope there were many, very many, good people in the world, that lay out of the pale of God's covenant of peculiarity with Abraham, whose names were in the book of life, though not descended from any of the following families written in this book. The Lord knows those that are his. But Israel was a chosen nation, elect in type; and no other nation, in its national capacity, was so dignified and privileged as the Jewish nation was. That is the holy nation which is the subject of the sacred story; and therefore we are next to shake off all the seed of Abraham but the posterity of Jacob only, which were all incorporated into one nation and joined to the Lord, while the other descendants from Abraham, for aught that appears, were estranged both from God and from one another. I. We shall have little to say of the Ishmaelites. They were the sons of the bondwoman, that were to be cast out and not to be heirs with the child of the promise; and their case was to represent that of the unbelieving Jews, who were rejected (Gal 4:22, etc.), and therefore there is little notice taken of that nation. Ishmael's twelve sons are just named here (Ch1 1:29-31), to show the performance of th…

1:28-33 Using the same pattern as the author of Genesis, the Chronicler traces separately the descendants of Abraham apart from Isaac, listing the sons of Ishmael (1:29-31; cp. Gen 25:12-15) and the sons of Keturah (1 Chr 1:32-33; cp. Gen 25:1-3) before detailing the descendants in the chosen family line.