Beriah in Fausset's Bible Dictionary
("in evil" or "a gift".)
1. Asher's son, from whom descended "the family of
the Beerites" (Genesis 46:17; Numbers 26:44-45).
2. A son of Ephraim, so-called "because it went evil
with Ephraim's house" at the time, the men of Gath "born in
that land" (Goshen, or else the eastern part of Lower Egypt)
having slain his sons in a raid on cattle (1 Chronicles
7:20-23). if Beriah mean a "gift," he will be regarded as an
extraordinary gift from God to Ephraim, now old, to stand
"instead of" his sons whom he had lost; such was Seth
(Genesis 4:25 margin). The incident perhaps belongs to the
time, otherwise unnoticed, between Jacob's death and the
Egyptian enslaving of his seed; for Ephraim's sons must,
some of them, have been full grown and the Hebrew still
free. The men of Gath were children of Philistine settlers
in Goshen or the adjoining region. In Joshua 13:2-3 the
Sihor, or (Pelusiac branch of) the Nile, is the boundary
between Egypt and Canaan; and in Genesis 46:34 the pastoral
population in Goshen being an "abomination to the
Egyptians," Goshen must have been regarded as non-Egyptian,
but a kind of border land between the two countries, Egypt
and Canaan.
The men of Gath may have been mercenaries in the
Egyptian army, with lands allotted them in that quarter. The
bloody attack of Simeon and Levi on Shechem (Genesis 34:25-
29), and Pharaoh's fear lest in war the Israelites should
join Egypt's foes and so get up out of the land (Exodus 1),
show the possibility of their having been the aggressors,
but as "come down" is more applicable to coming into than
going from Egypt, probably the men of Gath were the
aggressors. Translate therefore "when they came down." Keil
thinks that" Ephraim" here is not the patriarch, but his
descendant ages after bearing his name. Ezer and Elead his
sons went down from mount Ephraim to Gath to carry off the
Gittites' cattle and were slain in the attempt. Their
father's sorrow for them was alleviated by the birth of
Beriah. This view is possible.
3. A Benjamite who, with Shema, his brother, were
ancestors of the inhabitants of Aijalon, and "drove away the
inhabitants of Gath" (1 Chronicles 8:13).
4. A Gershomite Levite (1 Chronicles 23:10-11).
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