What Does 1 Chronicles 4:23 Mean?
These were the potters, and those that settled among plants and hedges. There they settled with the king for his work.
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
These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.THE KEY
The king’s work takes shape as a place people make, grow, and inhabit.
THE MEANING
You see the king’s work carried by people whose craft and dwelling are woven into a place: potters shape, while others live among plants and hedges. The work is not only a task performed for the king; it is also a life lived within what that work forms.
THE ROOT
הַיּוֹצְרִים
hayyotserim
GROWS FROM
יצר
to form, shape, or fashion
“potters” in this verse is hayyotserim. “Potter” names a craft, while its Hebrew root also means to form or shape. The verse places this act of giving form within the king’s work, among people who dwell in the very place the work serves.
ALSO GROWS
yatsar: to form or fashion
יָצַר
It shows the shaping action inside the word for potter.
yetser: formation, design, or intention
יֵצֶר
The same root can name a formed design, widening the image from a trade to the act of shaping.
נְטָעִים
neta'im
GROWS FROM
נטע
to plant or set into the ground
“plants” in this verse is neta'im. The word points to planted growth: something set into a place and allowed to take root there. Alongside the potters, it shows the king’s work as including both shaped objects and living growth.
ALSO GROWS
nata: to plant
נָטַע
It names the act behind the planted places among which these people dwell.
matta: a planting or plantation
מַטָּע
It carries the root into a place defined by what has been planted.
גְּדֵרוֹת
gederot
GROWS FROM
גדר
to enclose or mark a boundary with a fence or wall
The root gives the hedges a sense of enclosure and boundary, not just greenery. With shaping and planting, the verse presents a place made, grown, and held within edges where people live and work.
ALSO GROWS
gadar: to fence in or enclose
גָּדַר
It names the action that creates the boundary suggested by the hedges.
gederah: a fence or enclosure
גְּדֵרָה
It makes explicit the bounded place implied by the plural hedges in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Meaningful work is embodied in places people shape, cultivate, and inhabit.
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.But now, LORD, you are our father. We are the clay, and you our potter, and all of us are the work of your hand.For we are fellow workers with God. You are God's field; you are God's building.THE THREAD
But now, LORD, you are our father. We are the clay, and you our potter, and all of us are the work of your hand.The Hebrew word for potter in both verses comes from יצר (yatsar), meaning to form or shape. Isaiah opens the craft in this verse toward the deeper image of a maker giving form to what is in hand.
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