What Does 1 Chronicles 17:10 Mean?
And since the day I commanded judges over my people Israel, I have brought all your enemies low. Moreover I declare to you that the LORD will build you a house.
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 since the time that I commanded judges to be over my people Israel. Moreover I will subdue all thine enemies. Furthermore I tell thee that the LORD will build thee an house.THE KEY
The house you long to make secure is itself being built by the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks where opposition and the need for a lasting place feel intertwined: the LORD brings hostile power low and builds what your own hands cannot guarantee. “House” reaches beyond a structure to household, lineage, and a place that can endure. What holds you is the LORD’s initiative, not the strength of your defense.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your future depends on defeating every threat and building a secure place by yourself. The verse places both the subduing of opposition and the making of a lasting house in the LORD’s hands.
THE ROOT
יִבְנֶה
yivneh
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
To build or establish.
“build” in this verse is yivneh. The promise uses the root of building: what becomes a lasting house is established by the LORD. The same root can describe both the act of building and what is built, holding the work and its enduring result together.
ALSO GROWS
nivnah: Be built.
נִבְנָה
The passive form brings attention to what receives the building, as the promised house does.
mivneh: Structure or building.
מִבְנֶה
This branch names the formed result of the same building action.
בַּיִת
bayit
GROWS FROM
בית
b-y-t
House or dwelling; also household or family line.
“house” in this verse is bayit. Bayit can name a building, the people who belong to a household, or a continuing family line. The LORD’s promise therefore reaches beyond a structure to a lasting place of belonging and continuity.
ALSO GROWS
beit-av: Father’s household or family.
בֵּית־אָב
This compound shows bayit naming a family, not only a building.
beit YHWH: House of the LORD; temple.
בֵּית יְהוָה
The same word can name a sacred dwelling, widening the sense of what a house can hold.
וְהִכְנַעְתִּי
ve-hikhnaʿti
GROWS FROM
כנע
k-n-ʿ
To be brought low or humbled; in a causative form, to bring low or subdue.
The root holds both being brought low and bringing something low. “Subdue” describes a reversal of height and power: hostile force is lowered, while the LORD establishes what endures.
ALSO GROWS
nikhnaʿ: Humbled or subdued.
נִכְנָע
This form describes what has been brought low by the action named in the verse.
hikhniʿa: To humble or subdue.
הִכְנִיעַ
This causative form makes clear that the threat is brought low by another’s action.
THE PATTERN
What lasts is established by the LORD’s building rather than secured by human effort.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.And I also say to you, You are Peter, the stone, and upon this bedrock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.For every house is built by someone, but the one who built all things is God.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.The word “build” comes from the same Hebrew root in both verses. Psalm 127 places human labor beside the LORD’s building; here, the promised house is what the LORD establishes.
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