What Does 1 Chronicles 29:16 Mean?
O LORD our God, all this surging store that we have set firm to build you a house for your set-apart name comes from your hand, and all of it is yours.
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
O LORD our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own.THE KEY
The hands preparing the house are returning what God’s hand supplied in the first place.
THE MEANING
You prepare abundance and shape it toward a house, yet its source and ownership never shift: it comes from God’s hand and remains God’s. The work is real, but it begins with what is already given.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that what you offer begins as yours and becomes God’s through your giving. The verse names both the abundance and its source as God’s.
THE ROOT
הֶהָמוֹן
hehamon
GROWS FROM
המה
To murmur, roar, or surge.
“surging store” in this verse is hehamon. The word for abundance belongs to a root that can describe a surging multitude. The store is a gathered many, yet the verse locates all that abundance in God’s hand, where its gathering does not make it self-originating.
ALSO GROWS
hāmâ: To murmur, roar, or surge.
הָמָה
This verbal form gives the abundance an image of many things moving together.
hāmôn: Multitude, abundance, or tumult.
הָמוֹן
The same word can name a crowd or great wealth, opening “store” as gathered abundance rather than an isolated possession.
הֲכִינוּ
hăḵînû
GROWS FROM
כון
To be firm, be established, or set in place.
“set firm” in this verse is hăḵînû. The word translated “prepared” carries the sense of establishing or setting something in place. The verse holds human preparation together with divine source: the work arranges what already comes from God.
ALSO GROWS
hēḵîn: To prepare or make ready.
הֵכִין
This is the verb’s prepared or made-ready form, linking the people’s work to setting the abundance in order.
māḵôn: An established place, dwelling, or base.
מָכוֹן
This related noun evokes a fixed dwelling, joining the act of preparing to the house being built.
קָדְשֶׁךָ
qodshekha
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart as sacred or distinct.
The phrase joins שֵׁם (shem, name as nature) to set-apartness: the house is for the character it names. The same root forms מִקְדָּשׁ (miqdāsh, sanctuary), while the verse keeps even the materials for this set-apart dwelling within God’s ownership.
ALSO GROWS
qōdesh: Set-apartness; holiness.
קֹדֶשׁ
This noun names the quality carried by “holy” in the phrase about God’s name.
miqdāsh: A sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The house belongs to the same word-family as the set-apartness it is built to honor.
THE PATTERN
What people gather and prepare remains received from God and belongs to God.
A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.For who sifts you apart? And what do you hold that you did not take? But if you did take it, why do you boast as though you had not taken it?Every good giving and every complete gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no shifting and no shadow cast by turning.THE THREAD
But who am I, and what is my people, that we should hold the strength to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come from you, and from your hand have we given to you.This line makes explicit what verse 16 holds in the image of God’s hand: all things come from God, and what is given is already God’s own. Together, the verses show the offering as a willing return of what has first been received.
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