What Does 1 Chronicles 2:3 Mean?
The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, which three the daughter of Shua the Canaanite brought forth to him. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew him.
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
The sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah: which three were born unto him of the daughter of Shua the Canaanitess. And Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the LORD; and he slew him.THE KEY
The verb “slew” means “caused him to die,” and Genesis 38:7 names the LORD as its subject.
THE MEANING
You meet a verdict without its case: Er is judged evil in the LORD’s sight, then put to death by the LORD. The verse names the judgment and its consequence, but not the act behind the charge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Firstborn status does not put a person beyond judgment.
THE ROOT
וַיְמִתֵהוּ
waymîtēhû
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
To die; in the causative form here, to cause someone to die, or put someone to death.
“slew him” in this verse is waymîtēhû. The verb translated “slew” is a causative form of the ordinary Hebrew verb “to die.” Genesis 38:7 uses the same verb and names the LORD directly as its subject, clarifying the pronoun in Chronicles.
ALSO GROWS
mût: To die.
מוּת
The verb behind “slew” comes from this root, linking the act to the resulting death.
māwet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun shares the root and makes visible the death contained in the causative verb.
mēt: Dead; a dead person.
מֵת
This form carries the same root from the act of dying to the state that follows.
רַע
raʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or harmful; to do evil.
“evil” in this verse is raʿ. The related verb can mean to act badly or cause harm, giving the verdict a concrete moral force. The verse still names no specific act, so the root illuminates the charge without filling in the missing story.
ALSO GROWS
rāʿaʿ: To do evil; to act harmfully.
רָעַע
The verb form shows the action implied by the verdict, though Chronicles does not say what Er does.
raʿ: Bad, evil, or harmful.
רַע
This is the adjective used for Er’s standing in the LORD’s sight.
rōaʿ: Evil or badness.
רֹעַ
This related noun names the quality the verse assigns to Er without describing its expression.
THE PATTERN
The LORD sees wrongdoing and acts against it; divine sight in Scripture is not passive observation.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth.The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the harm and the good.For the eyes of the LORD are upon the aligned, and his ears are open to their pleading; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.THE THREAD
And Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD struck him down.Genesis repeats the same Hebrew verdict and death verb, then names the LORD explicitly as the one who puts Er to death. The shared wording confirms the root connection while leaving Er’s offense unstated.
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