What Does 1 Chronicles 25:16 Mean?

The ninth to Mattaniah, he, his sons, and his brothers, were twelve.

1 Chronicles 25:16 · 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 ninth to Mattaniah, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:

THE KEY

Mattaniah’s name means “Yah has given,” so this roster places a name of gift inside an exact count.

THE MEANING

Mattaniah holds the ninth place, together with his sons and brothers, twelve in all. His name carries the sense “Yah has given” or “gift of Yah,” setting the language of giving beside the household’s counted place.

THE ROOT

מַתַּנְיָהוּ

Mattanyāhū

GROWS FROM

נתן

To give, set, or place.

Mattaniah’s name carries the sense “Yah has given” or “gift of Yah,” with its gift-language growing from ⁨נתן⁩ (nātan, to give). The name holds together the act of giving and what is given, a connection English names can leave hidden.

ALSO GROWS

nātan: To give, set, or place.

נָתַן

The verb names the act at the seed of Mattaniah’s gift-bearing name.

mattān: Gift.

מַתָּן

This noun names what is given, carrying the same root from the act of giving into its result.

mattānāh: Gift, present.

מַתָּנָה

This form makes the name’s gift-language concrete: what is given can be received and held.

THE PATTERN

A place in shared service belongs within an ordered whole and is carried in relationship.

And they let the lots fall, watch against watch, as well the small as the great, the teacher as the student.

1 Chronicles 25:8 · SDVThe turns are ordered across the group, with every role placed within the shared service.

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

1 Corinthians 12:18 · SDVEach member has a place within a body whose life is shared.

As each has received a gift, serve it to one another as good stewards of the many-colored favor of God.

1 Peter 4:10 · SDVA received gift finds its place as something shared with others.

THE THREAD

And Leah said, God has given me my wages, because I have given my maidservant to my husband. And she called his name Issachar, wages.

Genesis 30:18 · SDV

Mattaniah’s name carries the gift-language built from ⁨נתן⁩ (nātan, “to give”). Leah’s “God hath given me” uses that same root, opening the name’s compressed meaning into the act of giving.

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