What Does 1 Chronicles 2:26 Mean?
Jerahmeel had also another wife, whose name was Atarah; she was the mother of Onam.
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
Jerahmeel had also another wife, whose name was Atarah; she was the mother of Onam.THE KEY
Atarah’s name means “crown,” and its root also means “surround”, so the genealogy gives its mother a name that holds honor and enclosure together.
THE MEANING
Atarah’s name comes from a root meaning “to surround” or “crown.” The verse holds her name and her relation to Onam together: she is Atarah, and she is his mother.
THE ROOT
עֲטָרָה
ʿĂṭārāh
GROWS FROM
עטר
To surround or encircle; by extension, to crown.
Atarah means “crown,” but the root also carries the motion of surrounding. That same image can describe both a crown resting around the head and a protective boundary encircling someone.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṭar: To surround or crown.
עָטַר
In Psalm 5:12, this verb is translated “compass,” revealing the encircling sense within Atarah’s name.
ʿăṭāret: A crown or diadem, often in the phrase “crown of.”
עֲטֶרֶת
The noun makes Atarah’s name-image concrete: a crown is what encircles and marks the one who wears it.
יְרַחְמְאֵל
Yeraḥmeʾel
GROWS FROM
רחם
To show compassion or tender love.
Jerahmeel combines the compassion-root with אֵל (ʾēl, “God”), and is commonly understood as “May God have compassion.” The same consonants appear in רֶחֶם (reḥem, “womb”), bringing a bodily shade of tenderness close to this verse’s mention of a mother.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥam: To show compassion or tender love.
רָחַם
This verb carries the core of Jerahmeel’s name, so compassion is woven into the name beside this family line.
reḥem: Womb.
רֶחֶם
Its shared consonants let the word for compassion resonate beside the verse’s word “mother.”
THE PATTERN
The עטר root holds honor and protection together: to crown is also to surround.
For you, LORD, bless the aligned one; with favor you encircle him as with a shield.And you make him a little short of God, and you crown him with weight and splendor.A woman of strength is a crown to her husband, but she who shames him is like rot in his bones.THE THREAD
For you, LORD, bless the aligned one; with favor you encircle him as with a shield.The Hebrew verb translated “compass” comes from the same עטר root as Atarah’s name: it means to surround or crown. The name’s crown-image therefore also holds the sense of encircling, as the verse pictures favour surrounding someone like a shield.
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