What Does 1 Chronicles 25:20 Mean?
The thirteenth to Shubael, 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 thirteenth to Shubael, he, his sons, and his brethren, were twelve:THE KEY
The line counts a household, and its word for “sons” carries the language of building.
THE MEANING
You are shown a place within an ordered whole: one person, his sons, and his brothers together make twelve. The household takes shape through the people counted within it.
THE ROOT
בָּנָיו
banav
GROWS FROM
בנה
to build, construct, establish
The Hebrew word for “sons” belongs to a word family associated with building. The count gathers a person, his sons, and his brothers into a household taking shape through its kin.
ALSO GROWS
banah: to build, establish
בָּנָה
This is the root verb behind the building language carried by “sons.”
ben: son
בֵּן
The word for son is linked with the idea of building a household across generations.
ʾibbaneh: I may be built
אִבָּנֶה
This form makes the family-building image explicit: a household is built through children.
THE PATTERN
A person is counted within a larger whole whose unity holds distinct members together.
God settles the lone ones into households; he brings out the bound ones in chains; but the ones who turn away dwell in a parched land.So we, though many, are one body in the Anointed One, and each of us is a limb of one another.And all who trusted were together, and had all things in common.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Genesis 16:2 uses אִבָּנֶה (ʾibbaneh, “I may be built”) from בנה (banah, “build”) for Sarai’s hope of children. That same build-language echoes in the word for “sons” here, opening the count as a household taking shape through its kin.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us