Be'ri (Heb. Ben', "na, q. d.fonlanus, for 'nxa, Beeri; Sept. Bapi v. r. BopiV), a chief warrior, the fourth named of the eleven sons of Zophah, a descend- ant of Asher (1 Chron. vii, 36). B.C. perh. 1016.
Beri'ali (Heb. Beriah', on the signif. see below), the name of four men.
1. (Sept. Brcpia.) The last named of the four sons of Asher, and the father of Heber and Malchiel (Gen. xlvi, 17). B.C. 1856. His descendants were called Beriites (Num. xxvi, 44, 45).
2. (Sept. Rania v. r. Bspiw.) A son of Ephraim, so named on account of the state of his father's house when he was born. " And the sons of Ephraim ; Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son, and Zabad his son, and Ezer, and Elead, whom the men of Gath [that were] born in [that] land slew" [lit. "and the men . . . slew them"], "because they came down to take away their cattle. And Ephraim their father mourn- ed many days, and his brethren came to comfort him. And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son, and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house" [lit. "because in evil" or "a gift" "was to his house:" falM "r^n iTS^a ^S; Sept. on. h> kokoIq ty'hviro iv o'iK(>) fion; Vulg. " eo quod in malis domus ejus ortus esset"] (1 Chron. vii, 20-23). With respect to the meaning of the name, Gesenius prefers the rendering "in evil" to "a gift," as probably the right one. In this case, rt"l2 in the explanation would be, according to him, flSI with Beth essentia (Thes. s. v.\ It must be remarked, how- ever, that the supposed instances of Beth essentia- lining prefixed to the subject in the O. T. are few and incon- clusive, and that it is disputed by the Arabian gram- marians if the parallel "redundant Be" of the Arabic be ever so used (eomp. Thes. p. 174, 175, where this use of " redundant Be" is too arbitrarily denied). The Sept. and Vulg. indicate a different construction, with an additional variation in the case of the former ("my house" for "his house"), so that the rendering "in evil" does not depend upon the construction proposed by Gesenius. Michaelis suggests that ~^'7? mav
BERIAH
760
BERITE
meat' a spontaneous gift of God, beyond expectation I and the law of nature, as a son born to Ephraim now growing old might be called (Suppl. p. 224, 225). In favor of this meaning, which, with Gesenius, we take in the simple sense of "gift," it may be urged that it is unlikely that four persons would have borne a name of an unusual form, and that a case similar to that here supposed is found in the naming of Seth (Gen. iv, 25). Furst (Hi b. Handw. s. v.) suggests what appears a still better derivation, namely, a contraction of rtJ^"*|3 for nSTia, son of evil, i. e. unlucky.
This short notice is of no slight historical impor- tance, especially as it refers to a period of Hebrew historv respecting which the Bible affords us no other I like information. The event must be assigned to the time between Jacob's death and the beginning of the op- pression. B.C. post. 185C. The indications that guide us are, that some of Ephraim's sons must have attain- ed to manhood, and that the Hebrews were still free. The passage is full of difficulties. The first question is, What sons of Ephraim were killed? The persons mentioned do not all seem to be his sons. Shuthelah occupies the first place, and a genealogy of his de- scendants follows as far as a second Shuthelah, the words "his son" indicating a direct descent, as Hou- bigant(ap. Barrett, Synopsis, in loc.) remarks, although he very needlessly proposes conjecturally to omit them. A similar genealogy from Beriah to Joshua is given in ver. 25-27. As the text stands, there are but three sons of Ephraim mentioned before Beriah — Shuthelah, Ezer, and Elead, all of whom seem to have been killed by the men of Gath, though it is possible that the last two are alone meant, while the first of them is stated to have left descendants. In the enumeration of the Is- raelite families in Numbers four of the tribe of Ephraim are mentioned, sprung from his sons Shuthelah, Becher, and Tahan, and from Eran, son or descendant of Shu- thelah (xxvi, 35, 3G.) The second and third families are probably those of Beriah and a younger son, unless the third is one of Beriah, called after his descendant Tahan (1 Chron. vii, 25) ; or one of them may be that of a son of Joseph, since it is related that Jacob deter- mined that sons of Joseph who might be born to him after Ephraim and Manasseh should "be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance" (Gen. xlviii, C). See, however, Becher. There can be no doubt that the land in which the men of Gath were born is the eastern part of Lower Egypt, if not Goshen itself. It would be needless to say that they were born in their own land; but as this was not Gath it- self, they must have been called "men of Gath" (q. (1. Gittites) as being descended from natives of that place. At this time very many foreigners must have been settled in Egypt, especially in and about Goshen. Indeed, Goshen is mentioned as a non- Egyptian country in its inhabitants (Gen. xlvi, 34), and its own name, as well as nearly all the names of its cities and places mentioned in the Bible, save the cities