What Does 1 Chronicles 22:6 Mean?
Then he called for Solomon his son, and charged him to build a house for the LORD God of Israel.
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
Then he called for Solomon his son, and charged him to build an house for the LORD God of Israel.THE KEY
The son charged to build bears a name from wholeness, so the commission already carries the sound of shalom.
THE MEANING
A responsibility entrusted within a relationship reaches beyond the person carrying it. Here, the work is directed toward the LORD, and Solomon’s name bears the root of wholeness, so the charge resonates with shalom.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵה
beneh
GROWS FROM
בנה
banah
to build or construct
The command בְּנֵה (beneh, “build”) sits beside בְּנוֹ (b’no, “his son”): their shared b-n sound lets the verse hear the son as the one who builds. Genesis 16:2 uses a form of banah where KJV says “obtain children,” echoing lineage and construction without making the two words identical.
ALSO GROWS
boneh: builder; one who builds
בּוֹנֶה
The builder is not abstract here: the work is entrusted to a person within a family relationship.
binyan: building; structure
בִּנְיָן
The same root carries the act of building into the structure that the charge brings into being.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
shalem
to be whole or complete
Solomon’s name shares the root שׁלם with shalom, wholeness. The commission therefore places a name carrying wholeness beside the work of building a house for the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being, peace
שָׁלוֹם
This is the familiar branch echoed by Solomon’s name, joining the builder to the wholeness named in the next verse.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
This branch shows the root’s sense of completeness beneath the name, beyond its use as a personal label.
THE PATTERN
A house may be built for the LORD, yet the LORD exceeds every house made by human hands.
Go and say to my servant David, Thus says the LORD, Will you build me a house for me to settle in?But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Yet the Highest does not settle in what is made by hands, as the prophet says.THE THREAD
Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies round about, for his name shall be Solomon, wholeness, and I will give wholeness and stillness to Israel in his days.The next verse explicitly links Solomon’s name with shalom, saying that God gives Israel peace and quietness in his days. The builder’s name is an echo of wholeness inside the commission.
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