What Does 1 Chronicles 2:18 Mean?
And Caleb the son of Hezron brought forth children by Azubah his wife, and by Jerioth; and these are her sons, Jesher, Shobab, and Ardon.
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 Caleb the son of Hezron begat children of Azubah his wife, and of Jerioth: her sons are these; Jesher, and Shobab, and Ardon.THE KEY
The name Azubah means “forsaken,” yet the verse places her among the mothers whose children carry the family line forward.
THE MEANING
Azubah’s name carries the sense “forsaken,” and the verse places her within a line of named lives and children. The list leaves her story untold, but it does not leave her out of the generations it records.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A life marked by abandonment has no place in what continues; this verse names Azubah as part of the line.
THE ROOT
עֲזוּבָה
Azubah
GROWS FROM
עזב
To leave or abandon; in passive form, left or forsaken.
Azubah’s name comes from the root עזב (ʿ-z-b), “to leave or abandon,” and carries the sense “forsaken.” The name stands among those of the children and their line, though the verse does not tell what circumstances it records.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāzav: To leave, abandon, or forsake.
עָזַב
This verb names the action behind the condition carried by Azubah’s name.
ʿāzûv: Left, abandoned, or forsaken.
עָזוּב
This form makes the root’s sense visible as a condition, the sense reflected in Azubah’s name.
הוֹלִיד
holid
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear, beget, or bring forth.
“brought forth” in this verse is holid. The Hebrew verb הוֹלִיד (holid, “beget”) uses a causative form of ילד (yalad, “bear or bring forth”). The same root reaches from the child to תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot, “generations”), connecting one birth with the line that follows.
ALSO GROWS
yālaḏ: To bear, give birth, or beget.
יָלַד
This is the root behind the verse’s word “begat,” the act that brings the children into the line.
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child is another form of the same root: what is brought forth by the act of begetting.
toledot: Generations, descendants, or origins.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch names the continuing line that grows from the births the verse records.
THE PATTERN
A birth joins a named line whose story keeps unfolding through generations.
This is the book of the births of Adam. In the day that God created the ground-being, in the likeness of God he made him.And the women who were her neighbors called out a name for him, saying, A son is born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
When my father and my mother let go of me, then the LORD gathers me in.The verb translated “forsake” comes from עזב (ʿ-z-b), the same root carried in Azubah’s name, “forsaken.” This verse gives voice to the name’s tension: abandonment is real, but it does not decide the end of being received.
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