What Does 1 Chronicles 22:4 Mean?
Also cedars without number, for the Sidonians and the people of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David.
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
Also cedar trees in abundance: for the Zidonians and they of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats “cedar trees in abundance” twice, keeping the trees and the timber within one continuous image of provision.
THE MEANING
A work taking shape in your life may already be receiving what you cannot produce alone; provision can arrive through hands and places beyond your reach. The verse names abundance twice, and its repeated Hebrew phrase holds cedar trees and cedar timber in one image.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that meaningful work must be supplied entirely from what is already in your own hands gives way here: the cedar arrives through other people.
THE ROOT
רֹב
rov
GROWS FROM
רבב
R-B-B
To increase, multiply, or become many.
The Hebrew repeats לָרֹב (larov, “in abundance”) after the cedar phrase, while English renders the two instances as “in abundance” and “much.” What English presents as two descriptions is one repeated measure: the cedar comes in multitude.
ALSO GROWS
rov: Abundance, multitude.
רֹב
This is the word repeated in the verse; it makes the supply explicit both before and after the people who bring it are named.
revavah: A myriad, ten thousand.
רְבָבָה
This branch carries the same sense of multiplying into a multitude, extending the verse’s image of more than a small or isolated supply.
hirbah: He increased or made many.
הִרְבָּה
This verbal branch shows abundance as increase: the root can describe not only a large amount, but becoming many.
אֲרָזִים
arazim
GROWS FROM
ארז
ʾ-R-Z
Cedar.
The Hebrew repeats the same phrase, עֲצֵי אֲרָזִים (atzei arazim, “wood of cedars”), where English first says “cedar trees” and later “cedar wood.” The repeated cedar-word keeps the standing tree and the building material connected in the verse’s picture of provision.
ALSO GROWS
erez: A cedar tree.
אֶרֶז
This is the singular form behind the cedars named in the verse.
arazim: Cedars; cedar trees or cedar wood, according to context.
אֲרָזִים
The plural appears in the repeated phrase and accommodates the verse’s movement from trees to timber without changing the cedar-word.
הֵבִיאוּ
hevi'u
GROWS FROM
בוא
B-W-ʾ
To come or arrive; in the causative form, to bring or cause to come.
“Brought” is a causative form of the Hebrew verb for “come”: the people cause the cedar to arrive at David. The wording makes provision a movement from elsewhere into the work being prepared.
ALSO GROWS
bo: Come, enter, or arrive.
בּוֹא
This is the root’s basic movement, the arrival that lies inside the verse’s “brought.”
hevi: Bring, cause to come.
הֵבִיא
This causative branch describes the action of the people named here: they make the cedar arrive.
THE PATTERN
A work is supplied by abundance that passes through many hands and arrives from beyond its builders.
The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman whose heart made them free-hearted to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.But through evenness, that in this present season your overflow may fill their lack, and their overflow may fill your lack, that there may be evenness.THE THREAD
So Hiram gave Solomon the trees of cedar and the trees of fir, according to all his desire.The same cedar-word, אֲרָזִים (arazim, “cedars”), appears when Hiram supplies Solomon. The root carries the cedar gift forward into the house-building work.
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