Was Samuel’s firstborn son Joel or Vashni?

‘Vashni’ is almost certainly not a name at all. In Hebrew the word is washni, which, read as ordinary Hebrew, means ‘and the second’. The verse then runs, ‘the sons of Samuel: the firstborn [Joel], and the second, Abiah’, exactly as in 1 Samuel 8:2, except that the name of the firstborn has dropped out in copying. A scribe’s eye easily skips a short name in a list like this, and once Joel was missing, ‘and the second’ was read as the firstborn’s name. Adam Clarke explains the verse this way (Keil and Delitzsch also note that the firstborn’s name, Joel, is missing), and modern translations such as the WEB and the BSB restore the name: “the firstborn, Joel, and the second, Abijah”.

Chronicles itself confirms the reading. Five verses later it traces the singer Heman back to “Joel, the son of Shemuel” (1 Chronicles 6:33), naming Samuel’s son Joel as Samuel names him. So Samuel and Chronicles agree that Joel was the firstborn and Abiah the second; the difference comes from a later copy of one verse (see textual), and the original writing is held to be without error.

Two names

John Gill suggested instead that Vashni was a second name of Joel, so that Chronicles and Samuel name the same son differently. Most commentators prefer the explanation above, since washni is so plainly the Hebrew for ‘and the second’.