What Does 1 Chronicles 1:30 Mean?
Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Mishma, and Dumah, Massa, Hadad, and Tema,THE KEY
What looks like a bare list carries three meanings in its names: hearing, silence, and burden.
THE MEANING
Mishma (מִשְׁמָע, Mishma: hearing), Dumah (דּוּמָה, Dumah: silence), and Massa (מַשָּׂא, Massa: burden) carry meanings inside the names. Hadad and Tema remain in the line as names whose derivations are less certain.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁמָע
Mishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
שָׁמַע (shamaʿ): hear, listen, heed.
Mishma carries the sense of hearing, while shemuʿah is something heard, a report. English makes the name opaque; its Hebrew leaves the movement from hearing to what is heard visible.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen, heed.
שָׁמַע
The verb makes the name’s meaning audible as an act of receiving what is heard.
shemuʿah: A report; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows how hearing can become a message carried onward.
דּוּמָה
Dumah
GROWS FROM
דמם
דָּמַם (damam): be silent, cease, become still.
Dumah is linked with the language of silence and stillness. Its branch demamah can name quiet itself, so the name holds more than a soundless gap.
ALSO GROWS
damam: Be silent, cease, become still.
דָּמַם
This verb gives Dumah its sense of silence and stillness.
demamah: Silence, stillness; a quiet sound.
דְּמָמָה
The related noun shows that stillness can itself be present and perceptible.
מַשָּׂא
Massa
GROWS FROM
נשא
נָשָׂא (nasaʾ): lift, carry, bear.
Massa echoes the word for a burden, something carried, from the verb for lifting and bearing. The name keeps the image of carrying inside what would otherwise read as an opaque proper noun.
ALSO GROWS
nasaʾ: Lift, carry, bear.
נָשָׂא
The verb reveals the action beneath the name’s sense of burden.
massaʾ: A load or burden; also a weighty utterance.
מַשָּׂא
This noun gives the name its sense of something borne, including the prophetic use of a burden as an utterance.
THE PATTERN
A family line becomes visible as names are preserved and carried from one generation to the next.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.And the women who were her neighbors called out a name for him, saying, A son is born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.Abraham brought forth Isaac, and Isaac brought forth Jacob, and Jacob brought forth Judah and his brothers.THE THREAD
And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa,Genesis preserves the first three names in the same order within Ishmael’s genealogy; Chronicles repeats them and continues with Hadad and Tema here. The parallel lets the names’ meanings remain audible inside a family record.
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