the land which, properly speaking, was the heritage of Reuben. But in Chronicles these extinct tribes again come to life--and not Levi alone, which is a special case, but also Simeon and Reuben, with which alone we are here to deal--and they exist as independent integral twelfths of Israel, precisely like Ephraim and Manasseh, throughout the whole period of the monarchy down to the destruction of the kingdom by the Assyrians. /1/ This is -- Footnote 1. For Reuben see (in addition to 1Chronicles v. 1-10) v. 18, xi. 42, xii. 37. xxvi. 32, xxvii. 16, for Simeon, 1Chronicles iv. 24-43, with xii. 25, and 2Chronicles xv. 9, xxxiv. 6, observing that in the last two passages Simeon is reckoned as belonging to the northern kingdom, so as to complete the number of the ten tribes. -- Footnote diametrically opposed to all authentic tradition; for to maintain that nothing else is intended than a continued subsistence of individual Simeonite and Reubenite families within other tribes is merely a desperate resort of the harmonists, and every attempt to tone down the fact that those extinct and half-mythical tribes are in Chronicles placed side by side with the rest without any distinction is equally illegitimate. The historical value thus lost by the narrative as a whole cannot be restored by the seeming truthfulness of certain details. Or is more significance really to be attached to the wars of the Simeonites and Reubenites against the Arabians than to the rest of the extemporised wars of the kings of Judah against these children of the wilderness? If only at least the names had not been "sons of Ham, and Mehunim and Hagarenes " (iv. 40 seq. [Heb.], v. 10)! As for the pedigrees and genealogical lists, are they to be accepted as historical merely because their construction is not apparent to us, and they evade our criticism? The language affords no room for the conjecture that we here possess extracts from documents of high antiquity (iv. 33, 38, 4I, v. 1 seq., 7, 9 seq.), and proper names such as Elioenai and the like (iv. 35 seq.) are not striking for their antique originality.