What Does 1 Chronicles 25:6 Mean?
All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the LORD, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, for the serving of the house of God, by the hand of the king to Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman.
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
All these were under the hands of their father for song in the house of the LORD, with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, for the service of the house of God, according to the king’s order to Asaph, Jeduthun, and Heman.THE KEY
The repeated “hand” places sacred song within a chain of stewardship, where inherited craft becomes service to the house of God.
THE MEANING
Song is a form of service within the house of God. Its work is relational and entrusted: a father guides the singers, and the king’s direction gives their music a shared shape. Cymbals, psalteries, and harps belong to the service itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that sacred music is merely a performance dissolves here: the verse places it within the service of God’s house and under entrusted guidance.
THE ROOT
עֲבֹדָה
ʿavodah
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
to serve, to work
The word for service, עֲבֹדָה (ʿavodah), grows from the same root as the verb עָבַד (ʿavad, “to serve”) and the noun עֶבֶד (ʿeved, “servant”). That shared seed places the music within the work of serving God’s house: song is one of its forms.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavad: to serve, to work
עָבַד
This verb makes the service in the verse an active labor, the kind of work the musicians carry through song.
ʿeved: servant, one who serves
עֶבֶד
This branch shows the people carrying the music as part of their entrusted service.
THE PATTERN
Shared song becomes service when voices and instruments take their place in the work of God’s house.
Serve the LORD with gladness; come before his face with a ringing cry.Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and songs of breath, singing and plucking the strings in your heart to the Lord.And it came to be, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one voice heard in praising and in extending the hands to the LORD; and when they lifted their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of song, and praised the LORD, saying, For he is good; his faithful love is for the ages. Then the house was filled with a cloud, the house of the LORD.THE THREAD
Serve the LORD with gladness; come before his face with a ringing cry.Psalm 100:2 uses עִבְדוּ (ʿivdu, “serve”), from the same root as עֲבֹדָה (ʿavodah, “service”) in this verse. It names the link directly: serving the LORD and singing belong together.
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