Was Heman the son of Mahol, of Zerah or of Joel?

‘Son of’ in these verses does three different jobs, and none of the three passages contradicts the others. Only 1 Chronicles 6:33 (with 15:17) gives Heman’s father, Joel, and it traces him back generation by generation, through Samuel and Korah, to Levi. ‘Sons of Zerah’ cannot mean that Zerah fathered him, for Zerah was Judah’s son, born long before the time in Egypt, while Heman lived under David and Solomon. It names the clan he belonged to, and 1 Kings 4:31 and Psalm 88 use the clan name for him and Ethan: ‘Ezrahite’ is the Hebrew Ezraḥi, a form of Zarḥi, ‘Zerahite’ (Numbers 26:20). Keil and Delitzsch explain that Heman, a Levite by descent, was counted with the Judahite family of Zerah, much as Samuel’s Levite father Elkanah is called “an Ephrathite” (1 Samuel 1:1) and a Levite of Bethlehem is said to be “of the family of Judah” (Judges 17:7). Levites had no territory of their own and lived among the other tribes. The heading of Psalm 88 shows the two descriptions belonging to one man: the psalm is “for the sons of Korah”, Heman’s Levite family, and by “Heman the Ezrahite”.

‘Sons of Mahol’ is the least certain phrase. Mahol may be the father of Calcol and Darda, the last two names in the list. Or it may not be a name at all: maḥol is the Hebrew for ‘dance’, and ‘sons of the dance’ would describe the four as men of music, which suits Heman the singer exactly. John Gill and Keil and Delitzsch both mention this reading.

Two men called Heman

Many take Heman the wise man of 1 Kings 4:31 and 1 Chronicles 2:6, of the tribe of Judah, to be a different man from Heman the Levite singer of 1 Chronicles 6:33. Then Joel was the singer’s father, Zerah the wise man’s distant ancestor, and Mahol perhaps the wise man’s father or his title. Gill, on 1 Kings 4:31, allowed a different split: that the men named there might be other men than the sons of Zerah in 1 Chronicles 2:6.

Ancient sages

A Jewish tradition reported by Gill placed the sons of Zerah long before Solomon, in Egypt. On that view 1 Kings 4:31 compares Solomon with famous wise men of the past, and only the singer of Chronicles is David’s contemporary.

Christian scholars are divided over whether there was one Heman or two, and over what ‘sons of Mahol’ means. On every view the passages can all be true, because only one of them names Heman’s father.