Whose number was in the days of David ... - The writer would seem by this passage to have had access to the statistics of the tribes collected by David, when he sinfully "numbered the people" (marginal reference). The numbers given in 1 Chronicles 7:4-5 probably came from the same source.

Whose number was in the days of David - Whether this was the number returned by Joab and his assistants, when they made that census of the people with which God was so much displeased, we know not. It is worthy of remark that we read here the sum of three tribes, Benjamin, Issachar, and Asher, under the reign of David, which is mentioned nowhere else; and yet we have no account here of the other tribes, probably because the author found no public registers in which such enumeration was recorded.

And the sons of Tola,.... The eldest son of Issachar, whose posterity are only reckoned by name:

Uzzi, and Rephaiah, and Jeriel, and Jahmai, and Jibsam, and Shemuel, heads of their father's house, to wit, of Tola; the principal man of his family:

they were valiant men of might in their generations, famous for their courage and military exploits, though they sprang from Tola, whose name signifies "a worm"; and which name Bochart (k) conjectures was given him by his parents, because he was so weakly that they had no hopes of raising him; and yet from him sprung such mighty men, and from them such a numerous race, as follows:

whose number was, in the days of David, two and twenty thousand and six hundred; besides those of the posterity of Uzzi, after mentioned. This was at the time Joab took the number of Israel, by the order of David, 1 Chronicles 21:5.

(k) Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 4. c. 21. col. 630.

The six sons of Tola are not elsewhere met with in the Old Testament. They were "heads of their fathers'-houses of Tola." לתולע after אבותם לבית (with the suffix) is somewhat peculiar; the meaning can only be, "of their fathers'-houses which are descended from Tola." It is also surprising, or rather not permissible, that לתולדותם should be connected with חיל גּבּורי. לתולדותם belongs to the following: "(registered) according to their births, they numbered in the days of David 22,600." The suffixes ם- do not refer to ראשׁים, but to the בּית־אבות, the fathers'-houses, the males in which amounted to 22,600 souls. As David caused the people to be numbered by Joab (2 Samuel 24; 1 Chronicles 21:1), this statement probably rests on the results of that census.

And the sons of Tola; Uzzi, and Rephaiah, and Jeriel, and Jahmai, and Jibsam, and Shemuel, heads of their father's house, to wit, of Tola: they were valiant men of might in their generations; {b} whose number was in the days of David two and twenty thousand and six hundred.

(b) That is, their number was found to be this big when David counted the people, 2Sa 24:1.

2. whose number was in the days of David two and twenty thousand and six hundred-Although a census was taken in the reign of David by order of that monarch, it is not certain that the sacred historian had it in mind, since we find here the tribe of Benjamin enumerated [1Ch 7:6-12], which was not taken in David's time; and there are other points of dissimilarity.

7:1-40 Genealogies. - Here is no account either of Zebulun or Dan. We can assign no reason why they only should be omitted; but it is the disgrace of the tribe of Dan, that idolatry began in that colony which fixed in Laish, and called it Dan, Jud 18 and there one of the golden calves was set up by Jeroboam. Dan is omitted, Re 7. Men become abominable when they forsake the worship of the true God, for any creature object.