Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Chronicles 5:26

"And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river of Gozan, unto this day." — 1 Chronicles 5:26 (ASV)

Stirred up (or woke) the spirit. — This is also found in 2 Chronicles 21:16, Ezra 1:1, and Ezra 1:5. For the thought, see Isaiah 44:28 and Isaiah 45:1-13.

Pul king of Assyria, and ... Tilgath-pilneser king of Assyria. — No trace of Pûl as distinct from Tiglath-pileser has been found in the Assyrian monuments, which, it must be remembered, are contemporary. In 2 Kings 15:19 we read that, “Pul king of Assyria came against the land,” in the reign of Menahem, who recognized the Assyrian monarch as his suzerain and paid a tribute of 1,000 talents of silver. Now Tiglath-pileser II actually claims to have received tribute from Menahem (Menahimmu).

Pûl appears to have been the original name of Tiglath-pileser, which, upon his accession to the throne of Assyria (745 B.C.), he discarded for that of the great king who had ruled the country four centuries before his time. The name Pûl has been identified by Dr. Schrader with the Porus of Ptolemy’s Canon, Pôr being the Persian pronunciation of Pûl. The Syriac version here omits “Pûl king of Assyria.” The Septuagint (Vatican manuscript) has Χαλαχ, and the Arabic Bãlaq. Perhaps the chronicler meant to indicate the identity of Pûl and Tiglath: “The spirit of Pul and (= that is) the spirit of Tiglath, and he carried them away.”

And he carried them away. — Tiglath-pileser is meant. (See 2 Kings 15:29: “In the days of Pekah king of Israel, came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah ... and Gilead, and Galilee ... and carried them captive to Assyria.”) From the Assyrian records we learn that (around 734–732 B.C.) Tiglath-pileser received the homage of Ahaz (Yahu-haçi, Jeho-ahaz), king of Judah, slew Rezin (Raçunni) of Damascus, and reduced Pekah (Paqahú), king of Samaria, to vassalage. This supplements the Biblical account.

Gilead, in 2 Kings 15:29, represents the trans-Jordanic tribes (see 1 Chronicles 5:10 and 1 Chronicles 5:16). The transportation of entire populations was a common practice with the Assyrian kings. Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus), for example, removed the men of Karbit from the mountains east of Assyria and settled them in Egypt.

Brought them to Halah, and Habor ... — The same localities are mentioned (2 Kings 17:6) as those to which Shalmaneser IV, or rather his successor Sargon, transported the other tribes of the northern kingdom (around 721 B.C.). There is nothing unlikely in the statement of either text. Sargon might have thought fit to strengthen the Israelite settlements in Northern Assyria by sending there the new bodies of compulsory colonists. It is arbitrary to suppose that two different events have been confused by the sacred annalists.

Halah. — See Note on 2 Kings 17:6.

Habor. — Probably a district of North Assyria, not far from Halah, named after the river Habûr, which rises near the upper Zab and falls into the Tigris.

Hara. — In Kings, in the place cited (see 2 Kings 17:6), the text is cities of Media. Hara here is perhaps an Aramaic name for the Median highlands, but more probably the reading is a relic of “the mountains of Media” (hârê Mâdai); compare the Septuagint at 2 Kings 17:6. The Syriac version here has “cities of Media”; the Septuagint omits the word.

The river Gozan. — Rather, the river of Gozan. Shalmaneser mentions the country Guzana in Mesopotamia, the Greek Gauzanitis. An Assyrian list connects it with Naçibina (Nisibis). The “river of Gozan” is the Habur.