Topic
Mered
3 passages cited, from 4 classic reference works.
These works date from 1884–1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- 1 Chronicles 4:17Easton · Smith · ISBE · Nave
And the sons of Ezra were, Jether, and Mered, and Epher, and Jalon: and she bare Miriam, and Shammai, and Ishbah the father of Eshtemoa.
- 1 Chronicles 4:18Smith · ISBE · Nave
And his wife Jehudijah bare Jered the father of Gedor, and Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. And these are the sons of Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took.
- 1 Chronicles 4:19ISBE
And the sons of his wife Hodiah the sister of Naham, the father of Keilah the Garmite, and Eshtemoa the Maachathite.
In the reference works
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) · 1 references
Rebellion, one of the sons of Ezra, of the tribe of Judah (1 Chr. 4:17).
Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884) · 2 references
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 7 references
me'-red (meredh, "rebellion"; Septuagint has at least four variants in 1Ch 4:17,18): A descendant of Judah through Caleb, and mentioned as a "son of Ezrah" (1Ch 4:17).
Revised Version, rightly following the orthography of the Hebrew which has here the Hebrew letter he (h) instead of 'aleph (') , as in the name of the well-known Ezra, saves us from confusing this Ezrah with the other by giving him the correct terminal letter. Moreover, even if the question of spelling were waived, the absence of the mention of children in any known passages of the life of the scribe Ezra should settle the question, since this passage (1Ch 4:17) is associated with progeny.
A difficulty meets us in 1Ch 4:18, where Mered is mentioned as taking to wife "Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh." That Pharaoh is not the proper name of some individual but the official title of Egypt's sovereign seems evident from the fact that the King James Version margin and the Revised Version (British and American) text agree in translating the other wife of Mered as "the Jewess," rather than as a proper name Jehudijah, as if to distinguish the "Jewess" from the Egyptian. Probably "Hodiah" also is a corruption of Jehudijah in 1Ch 4:19, and should be translated again "the Jewess." Targums and traditions have so changed and transposed and "interpreted" this passage that a sufficiently confused text has become worse confounded, and the only solid fact that emerges is that once a comparatively obscure Judahite (though the founder of several towns--Gedor, Soco, Eshtemoa, etc., 4:18) married an Egyptian princess, whether as a captive or a freewoman we do not know.
See BITHIAH.
Henry Wallace
In the topical indexes
Texts: Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897); Smith's Bible Dictionary (1884); International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915); Nave's Topical Bible (1896), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.