What Does 1 Chronicles 25:13 Mean?
The sixth to Bukkiah, he, his sons, and his brothers, were twelve.
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 sixth to Bukkiah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:THE KEY
The Hebrew count for “twelve” is “two-ten,” placing this company inside a measured order of service.
THE MEANING
A shared place holds a company around it: the named person and those joined to the work count together. Their place is one allotment within a larger order, and the people within it remain visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that the person named first carries the work alone; his sons and brothers are counted with him.
THE ROOT
שְׁנֵים עָשָׂר
shneim ʿasar
GROWS FROM
עשר
ʿāśar (עשר): ten, the counted base within the Hebrew expression for twelve.
Twelve is spoken as “two-ten,” so the word carries a count within the count. The same root forms מַעֲשֵׂר (maʿăśēr), a tithe: the roster’s exact number belongs to the language of measured shares, with this company counted as one part of an ordered whole.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāśār: ten
עָשָׂר
This is the numeric element in the Hebrew expression for twelve: two plus ten.
maʿăśēr: tithe, a tenth portion
מַעֲשֵׂר
The same root turns ten into a measured share, echoing the way this company is counted within a larger order.
ʿeśrîm: twenty
עֶשְׂרִים
This word extends the same counted unit into a larger number.
THE PATTERN
Shared service gives distinct people an ordered place within one larger whole.
And they let the lots fall, watch against watch, as well the small as the great, the teacher as the student.But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.For just as we have many limbs in one body, and not all the limbs have the same deed.THE THREAD
Bring all of the tenth into the storehouse, so that there may be food in my house. Test me now in this, says the LORD of hosts, if I do not open the windows of heaven for you and pour out a blessing until there is no more room.The Hebrew count here contains עָשָׂר (ʿāśār), “ten”; Malachi’s “tithes” is מַעֲשֵׂר (maʿăśēr), from the same root. That root moves from the number within an ordered company to a measured portion brought into the storehouse.
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