What Does 1 Chronicles 19:13 Mean?
Take firm hold of yourselves, and let us take firm hold for our people, and for the cities of our God, and let the LORD do what is good in his eyes.
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
Be of good courage, and let us behave ourselves valiantly for our people, and for the cities of our God: and let the LORD do that which is good in his sight.THE KEY
Hebrew uses one root for “be of good courage” and “behave valiantly,” making courage a shared strengthening while the outcome remains with the LORD.
THE MEANING
You and those with you strengthen one another to stand for your people and the cities of your God. Your courage is real, and the LORD remains the one who does what is good in his sight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that courage means controlling the outcome: the LORD’s sight, not yours, determines what is good.
THE ROOT
חֲזַק
ḥăzaq
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥazaq
To be strong, become firm, or strengthen.
“Take firm hold of yourselves” in this verse is ḥăzaq. Both phrases grow from the same root: first “be strong,” then “let us strengthen ourselves.” English can make courage and valiant action sound like separate qualities; Hebrew joins them as firmness that becomes mutual strengthening.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāzaq: To be strong, grow firm, or prevail.
חָזַק
This form underlies “be of good courage,” grounding courage in becoming firm.
ḥizzēq: To strengthen or make firm.
חִזֵּק
This form names the strengthening carried into the verse’s collective “let us strengthen ourselves.”
הַטּוֹב
hatov
GROWS FROM
טוב
tov
To be good, pleasing, or beneficial.
“what is good in his eyes” in this verse is hatov. The verse places “good” inside the LORD’s sight: what is good is measured by what the LORD sees, even when the outcome is not yet known. The word can carry the sense of what is beneficial, giving the LORD’s action both goodness and purpose.
ALSO GROWS
tov: Good, pleasing, or beneficial.
טוֹב
The verse uses this word for what the LORD sees as good.
tovah: A good thing or benefit.
טוֹבָה
This form shows how the root can name goodness as something concrete and beneficial.
THE PATTERN
Scripture joins human courage and action to God’s presence and judgment of what is good.
Hold fast and be firm. Do not fear, and do not quake before them. For the LORD your God is the one who walks with you. He will not release you, nor leave you.You will not need to fight in this war. Take your stand, and see the deliverance of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear, nor be shattered. Tomorrow, go out against them, for the LORD will be with you.For it is God who works in you, both to will and to do, for the sake of his good pleasure.THE THREAD
And David was greatly pressed into a narrow place, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the living soul of all the people had turned bitter, each man over his sons and over his daughters; but David took firm hold of himself in the LORD his God.The same root, חזק (ḥazaq), meaning “be strong” or “strengthen,” describes David strengthening himself in the LORD. Here, the verse extends that strengthening into the shared resolve of a whole group.
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