As already mentioned, the list is a sophisticated composition, numbering ten generations from Judah to Jesse and purporting to depict the family of Jesse as rooted in the most ancient and venerated of Judean families. Seen against the historical picture of the Pentateuch (which is a similar attempt to ‘historicize’ and ‘individualize’ genealogical data), this list poses several chronological difficulties. On the one hand, Moses’ contemporary Nahshon (Ex. 6:23) is placed in the sixth generation from