What Does 1 Chronicles 16:38 Mean?
And Obed-edom with their brothers, sixty-eight; Obed-edom also, son of Jeduthun, and Hosah, to be gatekeepers.
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 Obed-edom with their brethren, threescore and eight; Obed-edom also the son of Jeduthun and Hosah to be porters:THE KEY
The gate is not outside the work of worship; the verse names its keepers as part of it.
THE MEANING
This verse presents a community as a whole made of named people and distinct duties, including those who attend its entrance. The threshold belongs to the shared work: its keepers are counted among the community, not left outside its story. The names in the verse hold service, praise, and refuge around that work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that tending the threshold is peripheral to worship is undone by the verse counting its keepers among the community’s named people.
THE ROOT
שֹׁעֲרִים
sho'arim
GROWS FROM
שער
Gate, entrance; the root names the threshold at the center of the gatekeepers’ role.
The Hebrew plural שֹׁעֲרִים (sho’arim, “gatekeepers”) keeps the gate audible inside the role. Their work belongs to the point where people pass from outside to inside, making the threshold part of the community’s shared worship.
ALSO GROWS
sha'ar: Gate, entrance
שַׁעַר
This is the threshold named within the word for its keepers.
sho'er: Gatekeeper
שֹׁעֵר
The singular form makes clear that the role is to attend a gate.
sha'ar ha-shamayim: Gate of heaven
שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמַיִם
This phrase uses the same word for gate, linking the role to the image of a passage into God’s presence.
עֹבֵד
ʿoved
GROWS FROM
עבד
Work, serve.
Obed (עֹבֵד, ʿoved, “one who serves”) is the first element of Obed-edom, whose full name means “servant of Edom”; the language of service is already inside the gatekeeper’s name. Jeduthun (יְדוּתוּן, Yedutun, commonly glossed “praising”) names Obed-edom’s father, while Hosah (חֹסָה, Ḥosah, “refuge”) stands beside him in the gatekeeping line.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant
עֶבֶד
This noun shares the service-root carried in Obed’s name.
avodah: Work, service
עֲבֹדָה
This branch names the work that the verse assigns at the entrance.
THE PATTERN
The shared life of worship includes the people who attend its threshold, making access itself a form of service.
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand. I choose to stand at the threshold of the house of my God rather than dwell in the tents of wickedness.To him the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep hear and respond to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.THE THREAD
And he was struck with awe, and said, How awe-filled is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of the heavens.Genesis calls this threshold שַׁעַר (sha’ar, “gate”), the same Hebrew root heard in שֹׁעֲרִים (sho’arim, “gatekeepers”). The gatekeepers’ ordinary assignment thus echoes the image of a passage into God’s presence.
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