What Does 1 Chronicles 1:8 Mean?
The sons of Ham, Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.
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
The sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, Put, and Canaan.THE KEY
The Hebrew for “sons” grows from “build,” so this list presents a people as a house taking shape through generations.
THE MEANING
This verse places Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan as distinct names within Ham’s family line. It holds difference and kinship together, while the name Mizraim carries the image of constriction within the genealogy.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
b'nei
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build, construct (banah).
The word for sons belongs to the בנה family, the seed of building. Hebrew holds offspring and construction close: a family takes shape across generations, and these names appear as branches of that structure.
ALSO GROWS
banah: to build, construct
בָּנָה
This verb gives the family word its building root.
boneh: builder; one who builds
בּוֹנֶה
A family line is made of those who carry its structure forward.
mivneh: structure, building
מִבְנֶה
This branch makes the family-as-structure connection explicit.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
מצר
A narrow place or strait (metsar); constriction.
“Mizraim” in this verse is Mitzrayim. The consonants in Mitzrayim open onto מצר, the Hebrew word for a narrow place, while the -ayim ending carries the image of doubled constriction. Even within a genealogy, the name holds a landscape of narrowness alongside the wider movement toward spaciousness.
ALSO GROWS
metsar: narrow place, strait
מֵצָר
This word shares all three root consonants and gives the name its image of constriction.
metsarim: straits, narrow places
מְצָרִים
This plural carries the same consonants into an image of constriction in more than one place.
THE PATTERN
Distinct peoples branch from shared human families without losing their common source.
These are the families of the sons of Noah, by their births, in their nations; and from these the nations were parted in the earth after the flood.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.After this I see, and look, a great crowd that no one can number, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, wrapped in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.THE THREAD
These are the families of the sons of Noah, by their births, in their nations; and from these the nations were parted in the earth after the flood.Genesis 10:32 uses the same Hebrew word בְּנֵי (b’nei, sons), from בנה (banah, build), and widens the frame from Ham’s sons to Noah’s families and the nations. The shared root makes this genealogy part of one structure taking shape through branches.
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