What Does 1 Chronicles 4:40 Mean?
And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide of hands, still and at ease, for those of Ham had settled there of old.
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 they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old.THE KEY
The land’s abundance is measured in room and quiet, while the closing clause preserves the memory that others had lived there before.
THE MEANING
You meet abundance here as good pasture, broad land, and settled quiet: room where life can flourish. Yet the land’s quiet does not erase its story; the verse names the people of Ham who had dwelt there before.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Quietness is not proof of vacancy: the verse calls the land quiet and peaceable while saying the people of Ham had dwelt there before.
THE ROOT
רַחֲבַת יָדַיִם
rachavat yadayim
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ב
r-ḥ-b
To be wide, become spacious, or make room.
“wide of hands” in this verse is rachavat yadayim. The phrase is literally “broad of hands,” making spaciousness something you can feel as open room. The same root names a broad place reached out of narrowness; here, breadth is part of what makes the pasture livable.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: To be wide or become spacious.
רָחַב
This verb carries the land’s quality of breadth back to its seed: width as room opening up.
merchav: A broad place or open expanse.
מֶרְחָב
This noun shows how the root’s spaciousness can name a place in which life has room to unfold.
שֹׁקֶטֶת
shoqetet
GROWS FROM
ש־ק־ט
sh-q-ṭ
To be quiet, at rest, or undisturbed.
The root carries more than silence: it can describe a state of rest or freedom from disturbance. Paired with breadth and good pasture, quiet describes settled conditions, while the final clause still names earlier inhabitants.
ALSO GROWS
shaqat: To be quiet, rest, or remain undisturbed.
שָׁקַט
The verb reveals quiet as a state the land is in, not merely a sound it lacks.
sheqet: Quietness, rest, or cessation of disturbance.
שֶׁקֶט
This noun makes the land’s quiet a condition of settled life, held alongside the verse’s mention of prior habitation.
THE PATTERN
Life flourishes where it has room to spread and quiet enough to settle.
And he pulled up from there, and dug another well, and over that they did not strive. And he called the name of it Rehoboth, the wide places, and he said, For now the LORD has widened a place for us, and we shall bear fruit in the land.And my people will settle in a dwelling of wholeness, and in tents of leaning, and in resting places at ease.For kings, and for all who stand above; that we may lead a still and whole life in all awe and weight.THE THREAD
He brings me out into a broad place; he pulls me loose, because he delights in me.Psalm’s “large place” is מֶרְחָב (merchav, “broad place”), from the same ר־ח־ב (r-ḥ-b, “be wide or make room”) root as “wide” here. There, breadth is reached through deliverance from distress; here, it describes pastureland whose room makes abundance possible.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us