What Does 1 Chronicles 4:37 Mean?
And Ziza the son of Shiphi, the son of Allon, the son of Jedaiah, the son of Shimri, the son of Shemaiah.
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 Ziza the son of Shiphi, the son of Allon, the son of Jedaiah, the son of Shimri, the son of Shemaiah;THE KEY
Even where the record gives no deeds, the names preserve a chain of nature: knowing, guarding, and hearing.
THE MEANING
Your identity is held in relationships that reach beyond what you accomplish alone. Even a bare line of names carries human life forward, preserving who is connected to whom and the qualities carried in those names.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְרִי
Shimri
GROWS FROM
שמר
To keep, guard, or watch over.
Shimri’s name carries the root of guarding and keeping within this family line. The name opens onto more than an ancestor’s label: it holds the nature of watchfulness in the record.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Keeper or guard.
שֹׁמֵר
The keeper branch makes the guarding carried by Shimri’s name explicit.
mishmeret: A charge, watch, or guarded responsibility.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch shows keeping as an ongoing responsibility, a quality that can travel through a line of names.
שְׁמַעְיָה
Shemaiah
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear or listen; in the name, paired with Yah: “Yah hears.”
Shemaiah’s name holds hearing within the genealogy, placing the act of being heard at the far end of this named chain. English renders the name as a proper noun, while its root still carries the word “hear.”
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear or listen.
שְׁמַע
This is the root heard within Shemaiah’s name.
shemuah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The branch shows hearing becoming a message that can be carried from one person to another.
יְדַעְיָה
Yedaiah
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or perceive; in the name, paired with Yah: “Yah knows.”
Jedaiah’s name carries knowing into the middle of the family line. Beside Shimri’s guarding and Shemaiah’s hearing, it gives this otherwise bare list an inner texture: keeping, knowing, and hearing are all present in its names.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
This is the root that gives Jedaiah the meaning of knowing.
da’at: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This branch shows the root’s knowing as something held and carried, not merely a passing impression.
THE PATTERN
Names preserve identity and nature across generations, even when the record gives little else.
This is the book of the births of Adam. In the day that God created the ground-being, in the likeness of God he made him.And Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that you would surely bless me, and widen my border, and let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm, that it may not pain me! And God brought him what he requested.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
Look, the watcher of Israel neither nods nor sleeps.“Keepeth” comes from the same שָׁמַר root carried in Shimri’s name. The root lets this genealogical name open into an enduring image of keeping that remains awake.
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