1 Chronicles 7:6-12--Descendants of Benjamin

1 Chronicles 7:6-12
English Standard Version
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Descendants of Benjamin
6 The sons of Benjamin: Bela, Becher, and Jediael, three. 7 The sons of Bela: Ezbon, Uzzi, Uzziel, Jerimoth, and Iri, five, heads of fathers' houses, mighty warriors. And their enrollment by genealogies was 22,034. 8 The sons of Becher: Zemirah, Joash, Eliezer, Elioenai, Omri, Jeremoth, Abijah, Anathoth, and Alemeth. All these were the sons of Becher. 9 And their enrollment by genealogies, according to their generations, as heads of their fathers' houses, mighty warriors, was 20,200. 10 The son of Jediael: Bilhan. And the sons of Bilhan: Jeush, Benjamin, Ehud, Chenaanah, Zethan, Tarshish, and Ahishahar. 11 All these were the sons of Jediael according to the heads of their fathers' houses, mighty warriors, 17,200, able to go to war. 12 And Shuppim and Huppim were the sons of Ir, Hushim the son of Aher.

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The tribe of Benjamin is important.  They have always been leaders (not always in a good way) and they have always been skilled fighters (we might say "special forces").  Many of them were left-handed which made it interesting to fight against them because the usual tactics didn't work.

Here we see the heads of the tribe of Benjamin recorded along with the enrollment of their fighting men-The sons of Bela:  22,034 fighting men.  The sons of Becher:  20,200 fighting men.  The sons of Jediael:  17,200 fighting men.  Altogether this is 59, 434 fighting men from what was the smallest tribe among the 12 after their rebellion in the book of Judges.  Not only has the LORD preserved them, but He has made them mighty warriors to defend the other larger tribes (I believe this is still true to this day as there still seems to be a fighting spirit within the tribe of Benjamin).  God preserved them and allowed them to be the one tribe that stayed loyal to Judah when the tribes split--which didn't make a lot of sense since Saul was of the tribe of Benjamin, but it was God's plan for David to be king, and the tribe of Benjamin swore allegiance to David and his sons that would be heirs to the throne.  The tribe of Benjamin has an important role in the entire Bible--note that Saul who we later call Paul was of the tribe of Benjamin.  Without the tribe of Benjamin being preserved by the LORD, we would not have had the apostle to the Gentiles who wrote much of the New Testament.