What Does 1 Chronicles 24:15 Mean?

The seventeenth to Hezir, the eighteenth to Aphses,

1 Chronicles 24:15 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

The seventeenth to Hezir, the eighteenth to Aphses,

THE KEY

This bare roster makes service concrete as a named turn, with each place in the sequence belonging to someone distinct.

THE MEANING

The work before God is arranged in turns, and each turn has a name: Hezir is seventeenth, Aphses eighteenth. Your place in a larger work can be particular and temporary, with the next turn already belonging to someone else.

THE ROOT

הַפִּצֵּץ

Happitsēts

GROWS FROM

פצץ

To break apart or shatter.

The Hebrew name behind “Aphses” echoes ⁨פצץ⁩, the root for breaking apart. That sound gives the name a texture the English spelling conceals, though the verse leaves the person and the name unexplained.

ALSO GROWS

patsats: To break in pieces, shatter.

פָּצַץ

This verb carries the root’s basic action, echoed in the Hebrew form of Aphses.

mefatsets: One who breaks or shatters.

מְפַצֵּץ

This form turns the same action into an agent, showing how the root can name both an act and the one associated with it.

THE PATTERN

Service takes shape through assigned places and ordered turns.

Bring near to you Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, so that he may serve me as priest, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron's sons.

Exodus 28:1 · SDVThe priestly work is attached to named people and a particular office.

And it came to pass that, while he served as priest before God in the order of his shift,

Luke 1:8 · SDVThe priest’s service unfolds in an appointed course, as this verse’s numbered turns do.

But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.

1 Corinthians 12:18 · SDVThe body’s members each have a place within a whole, echoing the roster’s distinct assignments.

THE THREAD

Thus were they divided by cast stones, one with another, for the princes of the set-apart place and the princes of God were of the sons of Eleazar and of the sons of Ithamar.

1 Chronicles 24:5 · SDV

This verse reveals how the numbered turns are arranged: the groups are divided by lot. It opens the roster as an ordered distribution of service, rather than a bare sequence of names.

Read the SDV Bible.

Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.

Get Selah Verse

The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us