What Does 1 Chronicles 4:29 Mean?
And at Bilhah, and at Ezem, and at Tolad,
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
And at Bilhah, and at Ezem, and at Tolad,THE KEY
These town names carry more than coordinates: Ezem echoes bone-deep substance, while Tolad carries the root of generation.
THE MEANING
This verse gives names and places a place in the story you carry now: what is rooted and what is coming forth both belong in the account. Ezem echoes עצם (ʿetsem, bone or substance), while Tolad echoes ילד (yalad, to bear or beget). A bare list of locations becomes a record of substance and generation.
THE ROOT
תּוֹלָד
Tolad
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear, beget, bring forth.
Tolad is commonly linked to ילד, the root behind bearing and generation. The same seed appears in יָלַד (yalad, to bear) and תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot, generations), so the place name carries the language of emergence into this list of locations.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear, beget.
יָלַד
This verb supplies the generative action that the name Tolad echoes.
toledot: Generations; an account of begettings.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This word turns the root’s birth-language into a record across generations, like the lineage carried by the verse.
עֶצֶם
ʿEṣem
GROWS FROM
עצם
ʿ-ṣ-m
Bone; by extension, strength or substance.
Ezem resonates with עֶצֶם, the Hebrew word for bone and substance, and with words from the same root for strength. Beside Tolad’s language of generation, it gives the place list a sound of what is solid and what comes forth.
ALSO GROWS
ʿetsem: Bone; substance; self.
עֶצֶם
The name Ezem shares this word’s consonants, giving the place a resonance of substance and what is held at the core.
ʿatsum: Mighty, strong.
עָצוּם
This branch connects the root’s image of bone or substance with strength.
THE PATTERN
Scripture lets place names hold a people’s memory, making geography part of the story carried through generations.
And he called the name of that place Bethel, house of God; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.It has a great and high wall, and twelve gates, and at the gates twelve messengers, and names written upon them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.THE THREAD
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.The word “bare” translates יָלַד (yalad), from the same root ילד that Tolad carries. The name of a town thus echoes the same language of bringing forth that Genesis uses for birth.
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