What Does 1 Chronicles 12:2 Mean?
They were bearers of the bow, and could use both the right hand and the left to sling stones and throw arrows from the bow, even from the brothers of Saul out of Benjamin.
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
They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow, even of Saul’s brethren of Benjamin.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for bow also means rainbow, so the weapon in these hands and the covenant sign in the sky share one name.
THE MEANING
The fighters send stones and shoot arrows from either hand. The name Benjamin echoes yamin, right hand, even as their skill spans right and left. Read now, readiness reaches across the whole body’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that capacity belongs only to the more natural side: here, both hands carry the same forceful work.
THE ROOT
קֶשֶׁת
qeshet
GROWS FROM
קשת
q-sh-t
Bow; the same Hebrew noun also means rainbow.
Hebrew uses qeshet for both a weapon and a rainbow. English uses separate words, hiding that the bow in these fighters’ hands and the arc in the clouds share one name.
ALSO GROWS
Bow: A bow used to shoot arrows.
This is the weapon named in the verse.
Rainbow: The bow-shaped arc in the clouds.
The same Hebrew noun names the sign set in the cloud in Genesis 9:13.
יָמִין
yamin
GROWS FROM
ימן
y-m-n
Right side or hand; also the south, as the direction on one’s right when facing east.
The verse’s right-hand wording echoes yamin in the name Benjamin, Binyamin, meaning son of the right hand. Their name carries one side while their skill spans both.
ALSO GROWS
Right hand: The right hand or right side.
This is the side named in the verse’s description of their skill.
Benjamin: Son of the right hand.
The tribal name at the verse’s close contains yamin.
South: The direction on one’s right when facing east.
The same word carries right-hand orientation into geography.
THE PATTERN
A body’s capacity grows as its parts are trained and able to contribute their measure.
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones to the width of a hair, and never miss the mark.A Psalm of David. Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for war.from whom the whole body, joined together and knit by every joint that supplies, according to the working in the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.THE THREAD
I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be the mark of a covenant between me and the earth.Genesis names the bow set in the cloud with the same Hebrew word, qeshet. One word holds a weapon in the hand and a covenant sign spanning the sky.
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