These verses refer to Benjamites living in Aijalon who drove out the inhabitants of Gath
(1 Chronicles 8:13), possibly the same place as Gittaim.1 At least two of these, Beriah and Shema, were heads of families.
Aijalon (1 Chronicles 8:13) was a strategic town about 19 kilometres north-northwest of Jerusalem (1 Samuel 14:31), listed in 1 Chronicles 6:69 as a Levitical town located in Ephraim.2 This city was originally assigned to Dan (Joshua 19:42) but was abandoned by the Danites because of its stubborn Canaanite inhabitants (Judges 1:34; Judges 18:1–31). Here in 1 Chronicles 8, Aijalon is connected to the inhabitants of Gath, which suggests that the Benjaminites were those who displaced these Canaanites. It was fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11:10) but was taken by the Philistines in the reign of Ahaz (2 Chronicles 28:18). The fact that Benjamites lived in Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 8:28) shows how closely Judah and Benjamin were linked after the division of the kingdom.3
Aijalon, however, lay on the border with Ephraim, and it seems the tribe of Ephraim controlled Aijalon from early times (Judges 1:35).4 It is probably not coincidental that the Chronicler mentions the towns of Aijalon and Gath in connection with the tribe of Ephraim in 1 Chronicles 6:1–7:40. In 1 Chronicles 6:69 Aijalon is identified as a Levitical city of Ephraim. In 1 Chronicles 7:20–24 Gath is the city of the local inhabitants who killed Ephraim’s offspring, an action that, although justified, created a crisis for the continuance of the line of Ephraim. Now in 1 Chronicles 8:13, little Benjamin, which lay directly south of Ephraim and east of traditional Dan, enacts vengeance on the Gittites and conquers Aijalon.5
Beriah, named a clan head in Benjamin’s genealogy, was the one who led the charge against the Philistines in Gath. Interestingly, he has the same name as the son whom Ephraim fathered after the death of his two sons at the hands of these Gittites (the inhabitants of Gath; 1 Chronicles 7:23). This further strengthens the connection between these two passages, suggesting that Ephraim honoured these Benjaminites by naming his new son after this ancestral head.6
The summary note for the list in 1 Chronicles 8:28 establishes a link between the Benjaminite clans and the city of Jerusalem. Benjamites and Judahites during the period of the divided monarchy tended to mix in the same location. Jerusalem lay on the border between Judah and Benjamin (Joshua 15:8; Joshua 18:16), and thus in the books of Joshua and Judges is associated with both tribes: Benjamin (Judges 1:21) and Judah (Judges 1:8). Both tribes struggled to displace the Canaanite Jebusites who lived in the city (Judges 1:21; Joshua 15:63). It is only with David that Jerusalem was fully integrated into the tribe of Judah and the united kingdom (1 Chronicles 11:1–47). In 1 Chronicles 3:1–24 Jerusalem was identified as the royal city in the tribe of Judah, and it reappears here in the treatment of the other remnant tribe, Benjamin. From antiquity the Benjaminites have been connected to Jerusalem.7
13 and Beriah and Shema (they were heads of fathers’ houses of the inhabitants of Aijalon, who caused the inhabitants of Gath to flee);