What Does 1 Chronicles 3:20 Mean?

And Hashubah, and Ohel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushabhesed, five.

1 Chronicles 3:20 · 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

And Hashubah, and Ohel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushab-hesed, five.

THE KEY

Faithful love appears in two of these five names, making the family line echo the very quality its names carry.

THE MEANING

This verse speaks to you through a line of five distinct names, with faithful love sounding twice within it. Inheritance carries more than a record of lives: it can carry the nature of faithful love from one name to another.

THE ROOT

חֲסַדְיָה

Ḥasadiah

GROWS FROM

חסד

ḥ-s-d

Faithful love; loyal, steadfast kindness.

Hasadiah joins the root of faithful love with Yah, carrying the sense of Yah’s faithful love in a person’s name. Jushab-hesed repeats that same root, letting faithful love echo across two names in this line.

ALSO GROWS

ḥesed: Faithful love; loyal, steadfast kindness.

חֶסֶד

This is the root noun carried in Hasadiah and repeated in Jushab-hesed.

ḥasid: A faithful, loyal person.

חָסִיד

The same root can describe a person through the quality of steadfast kindness, turning faithful love from a named quality into a human identity.

THE PATTERN

Faithful love belongs to God’s nature and continues through generations.

And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,

Exodus 34:6 · SDVThe LORD is named as abundant in ⁨חֶסֶד⁩ (ḥesed, faithful love), the quality this genealogy carries in its names.

But the faithful love of the LORD is from age to age upon those in awe of him, and his alignment is to the children's children.

Psalm 103:17 · SDVThe LORD’s ⁨חֶסֶד⁩ (ḥesed, faithful love) reaches children’s children, extending the pattern of inheritance across generations.

And his faithful love is for those in awe of him, from generation to generation.

Luke 1:50 · SDVThe verse describes divine mercy continuing from generation to generation, echoing the repeated faithful love in these names.

THE THREAD

O extend your hands in thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his faithful love reaches to the ages.

Psalm 136:1 · SDV

Psalm 136:1 uses the same root, ⁨חֶסֶד⁩ (ḥesed, faithful love), rendered “mercy” in the KJV. There it names what endures; here that same root is carried in two names.

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