What Does 1 Chronicles 15:15 Mean?
And the sons of the Levites lifted the ark of God upon their shoulders, with the poles upon it, as Moses commanded according to the word of the LORD.
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
And the children of the Levites bare the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves thereon, as Moses commanded according to the word of the LORD.THE KEY
The verse makes the word part of the carrying: the sacred is borne by shoulders and poles in a way the word has already specified.
THE MEANING
The carrying is physical and specified: shoulders bear the ark through its poles, according to Moses’ command and the word of the LORD. The verse speaks now of sacred weight as something carried through an embodied form rather than held as an abstraction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the manner of carrying sacred purpose is irrelevant: the verse names the object and the way together.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׂאוּ
wayyiśʾû
GROWS FROM
נשא
Lift, carry, bear.
“lifted” in this verse is wayyiśʾû. The root נשא gathers lifting and bearing into one motion; מַשָּׂא (massa) is a load, and the same verb appears with crookedness in a phrase rendered “forgiving iniquity” (Exodus 34:7). English separates physical carrying from inner burden, while the Hebrew verb holds them within one range.
ALSO GROWS
massa: Burden, load.
מַשָּׂא
The carrier’s root also names the load itself, making the ark’s carrying an actual weight rather than an abstraction.
nōśēʾ ʿāwōn: Bearing crookedness; a phrase rendered “forgiving iniquity” in Exodus 34:7.
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The same verb can describe bearing crookedness, showing how Hebrew keeps physical weight and inner burden within one word’s range.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes weight visible through the bodies and relationships that bear it.
At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to lift the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD and minister to him, and to bless in his nature, to this day.Even to old age I AM, and to gray hair I will bear you. I have made, and I will lift, I will bear, and I will slip you free.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.Isaiah’s “borne” is נשא (nasa), the same root as “bare” here. The same verb carries both the ark’s physical weight and the griefs named in Isaiah, widening the image of bearing from a sacred object to human pain.
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