What Does 1 Chronicles 11:42 Mean?
Adina the son of Shiza the Reubenite, a head of the Reubenites, and thirty with him,
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
Adina the son of Shiza the Reubenite, a captain of the Reubenites, and thirty with him,THE KEY
A captain named Adina, “delicate”, stands with thirty, letting the verse hold tenderness and strength in the same frame.
THE MEANING
This verse holds tenderness and responsibility together: Adina’s name carries delicacy, while thirty stand with him. Strength here is shared, and it does not require a person to become hard. The reader’s own gentleness can belong within a life that carries responsibility for others.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strength requires hardness, and a leader must stand alone.
THE ROOT
עֲדִינָא
ʿAdina
GROWS FROM
עָדַן
ʿ-d-n
To be delicate or luxuriant; to take delight.
Adina’s name carries the quality of delicacy, yet the verse places him in leadership with thirty alongside him. The name holds tenderness within strength instead of setting them against each other.
ALSO GROWS
ʿadin: Delicate, tender.
עָדִין
This quality is carried in Adina’s name, letting the verse’s leader be tender as well as strong.
ʿEden: Delight, pleasure.
עֵדֶן
This branch echoes the root’s association with softness and delight, giving Adina’s name a quality beyond rank or command.
THE PATTERN
Strength in scripture is sustained through people who stand alongside one another.
But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.Two are better than one, because they have good wages for their toil.The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.THE THREAD
And Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, see-a-son, for she said, Surely the LORD has seen my bending low. Now therefore my husband will love me.“Reubenite” carries the name Reuben (רְאוּבֵן, Reʾuven; “See, a son”) into Adina’s description. Genesis unfolds that name through Leah’s words about the LORD seeing her affliction, so the lineage word carries the theme of being seen alongside descent.
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