What Does 1 Chronicles 16:40 Mean?
To send up rising offerings to the LORD on the altar of rising offering continually, morning and evening, and to do according to all that is written in the instruction of the LORD, which he commanded to Israel.
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
To offer burnt offerings unto the LORD upon the altar of the burnt offering continually morning and evening, and to do according to all that is written in the law of the LORD, which he commanded Israel;THE KEY
The Hebrew name for the burnt offering means “ascent,” so this verse frames the morning-and-evening sacrifice as something that rises within a life ordered by instruction.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the reader now of devotion as a repeated practice: the offering returns morning and evening, and the community’s actions remain shaped by what is written in the LORD’s instruction. The altar and the written teaching belong to one rhythm, joining embodied offering with ordered life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief that worship is only spontaneous feeling dissolves here: devotion takes a recurring form and remains accountable to instruction.
THE ROOT
עֹלוֹת
ʿolot
GROWS FROM
עלה
To go up, rise, ascend.
“send up” in this verse is ʿolot. The offering is named by ascent, and the verb translated “to offer” comes from that same root, joining the act to what rises. The repeated morning-and-evening offering carries that ascent as a costly, recurring act; the text keeps the altar and its burning in view while revealing the upward motion in its name.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: To go up, rise, ascend.
עָלָה
The verb behind “to offer up” shares this root with the offering’s name.
maʿalah: Ascent, upward step.
מַעֲלָה
This related form preserves the upward movement that the English phrase “burnt offering” does not foreground.
תּוֹרָה
torah
GROWS FROM
ירה
To direct or teach; instruction.
The Hebrew Torah carries the sense of instruction and direction. Here, written instruction shapes the same recurring worship, joining the rising offering to a way of practice.
ALSO GROWS
yarah: To teach, direct, or point.
יָרָה
The root verb shows Torah as instruction that points a way.
moreh: Teacher, one who instructs.
מוֹרֶה
This related form makes the instructional sense audible in the phrase “written in the law.”
THE PATTERN
Devotion takes shape through repeated, appointed rhythms.
This is what you offer on the altar. Two lambs of a year, day by day continually.You hear my voice at morning, LORD; at morning I lay out my prayer before you, and keep watch from the height.And the whole fullness of the people was praying outside at the hour of the incense.THE THREAD
And Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and sent up rising offerings on the altar.The same root, עלה (ʿalah, “to ascend”), names these burnt offerings and underlies the act of offering them. Genesis shows this ascent at an altar; Chronicles shows it returning morning and evening, turning the shared root into a recurring image of what rises.
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