What Does 1 Chronicles 4:30 Mean?
And at Bethuel, and at Hormah, and at Ziklag,
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 Bethuel, and at Hormah, and at Ziklag,THE KEY
Hormah places the language of the ban inside a list of where belonging takes shape.
THE MEANING
This line makes belonging concrete: Bethuel, Hormah, and Ziklag are named one by one. The places remain distinct even as the list holds them together.
THE ROOT
חָרְמָה
ḥormāh
GROWS FROM
חרם
To devote or place under a ban, often with destruction in view.
Hormah is related to the חרם (ḥ-r-m) word family: setting something apart under a ban, often for destruction. The verse does not describe an event there, but the town’s name carries that severe language into the list.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāram: To devote or place under a ban, often for destruction.
חָרַם
This verb expresses the action contained in Hormah’s root.
ḥērem: A ban, or something devoted under the ban.
חֵרֶם
This noun shows that the root can name the state of being set apart, as well as the act.
THE PATTERN
A place-name can carry an event’s meaning beyond the event itself.
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Israel, and gave the Canaanites into their hand, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction, and the name of that place was called Hormah, the devoted place.And he called the name of that place Bethel, house of God; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.And the LORD said to Joshua, This day I have rolled away the taunt of Egypt from off you. Therefore the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.THE THREAD
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Israel, and gave the Canaanites into their hand, and they devoted them and their cities to destruction, and the name of that place was called Hormah, the devoted place.This verse makes Hormah’s naming explicit: the place receives its name after the Canaanites and their cities are destroyed. Here, that same name sits among towns in a list, carrying the root’s severe meaning into the geography of belonging.
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