What Does 1 Chronicles 5:23 Mean?
And the sons of the half tribe of Manasseh settled in the land. From Bashan as far as Baalhermon and Senir, even to Mount Hermon, they multiplied.
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 the children of the half tribe of Manasseh dwelt in the land: they increased from Bashan unto Baal-hermon and Senir, and unto mount Hermon.THE KEY
The verse pairs becoming numerous with a widening inhabited reach, so increase is visible in the land itself.
THE MEANING
You can be rooted in a place and still grow beyond a narrow boundary. This verse holds dwelling and increase together: a people becomes numerous, and that growth is seen across the land from Bashan toward Hermon.
THE ROOT
רָבוּ
rābû
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
To be many, become numerous, or grow abundant.
“multiplied” in this verse is rābû. The root names a people becoming many. The place names that surround it give this increase a geography: the verse shows where that growing presence is found.
ALSO GROWS
yirev: May multiply.
יִרֶב
This form appears in the creation blessing over living creatures, linking increase with the multiplication of life.
hirbah: To increase or make numerous.
הִרְבָּה
This causative form shows the same root from the angle of what brings a multitude into being.
מְנַשֶּׁה
Menaššeh
GROWS FROM
נשה
n-sh-h
To forget; in the name’s form, to cause to forget.
“Manasseh” in this verse is Menaššeh. The name is linked to Joseph’s words, “God hath made me forget all my toil” (Genesis 41:51). Here that name marks a people whose presence extends across the land, placing the memory of toil beside a picture of increase without making one the cause of the other.
ALSO GROWS
nāšāh: To forget.
נָשָׁה
This verb is the seed behind the name Manasseh.
naššannî: He has made me forget.
נַשַּׁנִי
Joseph uses this form when he names his son, giving the tribal name its remembered phrase.
THE PATTERN
Across scripture, increase becomes visible as life multiplies and fills the place it inhabits.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."And the children of Israel bore fruit and swarmed and multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.And the word of God grew, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great crowd of the priests heard and responded by leaning their weight.THE THREAD
And the children of Israel bore fruit and swarmed and multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.The Hebrew verb translated “increased” here and “increased abundantly” there grows from the same root, רבה (r-b-h), meaning “to become numerous.” Exodus shows that abundance filling the land; Chronicles shows it alongside a stretch of named territory.
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