What Does 1 Chronicles 17:23 Mean?
And now, LORD, let the word that you have spoken concerning your servant and his house be steady for the ages, and do as you have said.
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
Therefore now, LORD, let the thing that thou hast spoken concerning thy servant and concerning his house be established for ever, and do as thou hast said.THE KEY
The prayer asks the spoken word itself to become firm enough to lean on: Hebrew links “be established” with the root behind trust and Amen.
THE MEANING
What the LORD speaks concerning the servant and his house is asked to stand firm through the ages. The prayer holds word and fulfillment together: what is spoken is to become steady in lived reality.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a promise is only comforting sound, asking for what is spoken to stand and be enacted.
THE ROOT
יֵאָמֵן
ye'amen
GROWS FROM
אמן
ʾ-m-n
To be firm, steady, reliable.
The form יֵאָמֵן (ye’amen, be firm or steady) asks for the word to stand. Its root also gives אֱמוּנָה (emunah, trust that leans your full weight) and אָמֵן (Amen, an affirmation); firmness belongs both to the promise and to the response that rests on it.
ALSO GROWS
emunah: Trust; leaning your full weight on.
אֱמוּנָה
The same root connects trusting with the firmness this prayer asks the spoken word to have.
Amen: Amen, an affirmation.
אָמֵן
The prayer’s request for the word to stand shares a root with the word that affirms it.
דְּבַר
dĕbar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak; a word or matter.
English separates “thing” from “spoken,” while the Hebrew uses forms from one word family for the matter and the act of speaking. The request is for the spoken matter itself to be made firm.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word; matter or thing.
דָּבָר
This word family underlies “the thing” the prayer asks to be established.
dibber: Spoke.
דִּבֶּר
The verb for speaking shares its root with the matter being spoken.
THE PATTERN
A spoken promise is treated as something whose firmness is shown in its fulfillment.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?They rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. As they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear and respond to me, O Judah, and you who settle in Jerusalem. Lean your full weight upon the LORD your God, and you will be made steady. Lean your full weight upon his prophets, and you will break through.For all the promises of God are yes in him, and in him Amen, unto the weight of God through us.THE THREAD
And he leaned his weight on the LORD, and he counted it to him as alignment.The Hebrew verb הֶאֱמִין (he’emin, trusted) comes from אמן (ʾ-m-n, firm or steady), the root behind “be established” here. The prayer’s firmness and this verse’s trust are the same root understood from two sides.
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