What Does 1 Chronicles 2:48 Mean?
Maachah, Caleb's concubine, brought forth Sheber and Tirhanah.
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
Maachah, Caleb’s concubine, bare Sheber, and Tirhanah.THE KEY
Even in a compressed genealogy, the verb centers Maachah as the one who brings the next names into the line.
THE MEANING
Life enters a family line through particular people, and this verse names Maachah as the one who bears Sheber and Tirhanah. It holds her place as Caleb’s concubine alongside her place as their mother. Her sons enter the record through her.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Only a wife’s children belong in the remembered family line.
THE ROOT
וַתֵּלֶד
vatteled
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear, bring forth, or beget.
The verb is *vatteled*, “and she bore,” from ילד, the same seed behind *yeled*, “child,” and *toledot*, “generations, what is brought forth.” English makes “bare” sound like a brief detail, while the Hebrew verb places Maachah at the point where this branch of the family line begins.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child; young one.
יֶלֶד
The child is the one brought forth by the act named in the verse.
toledot: Generations; descendants; what is brought forth.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch names the continuing line that begins with a birth.
THE PATTERN
A birth carries named lives forward into a larger family line.
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife. And when he went in to her, the LORD gave her to conceive, and she bore a son.And Jacob brought forth Joseph, the husband of Mary, out of whom Jesus was brought forth, who is called the anointed one.THE THREAD
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.Genesis uses the same Hebrew verb, ילד (*yalad*, “to bear”), for Eve’s bearing of Cain. There, Eve speaks after the birth; here, the verse leaves the birth unelaborated and lets Maachah’s sons’ names carry the line forward.
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