What Does 1 Chronicles 5:25 Mean?
And they broke trust with the God of their fathers, and went whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God wiped out from before their faces.
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 transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them.THE KEY
The verse’s two verbs turn one act into a sequence: first the bond is breached, then allegiance attaches elsewhere.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you about a bond breached and another allegiance pursued: it names the first as unfaithfulness to God and the second as sexual infidelity. It exposes the contradiction in pursuing the gods of a people whom God has destroyed before you. The betrayal is relational, and its object is bound to a people who did not endure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that allegiance can be shifted without breaking trust: the verse names pursuit of another god as infidelity to the bond with God.
THE ROOT
וַיִּמְעֲלוּ
vayyim'alu
GROWS FROM
מעל
m-ʿ-l
To act unfaithfully, deal treacherously, or breach a sacred trust.
“broke trust with” in this verse is vayyim'alu. “Transgressed” can sound like crossing a rule, but מָעַל names a breach of trust. The next verb, זָנָה, depicts that breach as intimate infidelity: the bond is violated, then another allegiance is pursued.
ALSO GROWS
ma'al: Treachery, unfaithfulness, or a breach of trust.
מַעַל
This noun makes clear that the verse names a betrayal of relationship, not merely a mistake.
me'ilah: Trespass or sacrilege.
מְעִילָה
This branch carries the breach into the sacred realm, illuminating the phrase “against the God of their fathers.”
וַיִּזְנוּ
vayyiznu
GROWS FROM
זנה
z-n-h
To commit sexual infidelity or prostitute oneself.
“went whoring” in this verse is vayyiznu. The root זָנָה gives the verse its image of pursuing another as an intimate attachment. It shows that the turn from God is not presented as a neutral change of ideas, but as relational unfaithfulness.
ALSO GROWS
zonah: A prostitute.
זֹנָה
The personal form makes the sexual force of the verse explicit.
zenunim: Whoredom or acts of sexual unfaithfulness.
זְנוּנִים
This plural form links the verse’s image to repeated acts of divided allegiance.
THE PATTERN
When allegiance turns toward a rival power, scripture describes the turn as a breach of relationship.
Lest you cut a covenant with the settlers of the land, and they go whoring after their gods, and slaughter to their gods, and one calls you, and you eat of his sacrifice.My people ask at their wood, and their staff declares to them. For the breath of whoredoms has made them wander, and they have gone whoring from beneath their God.You adulterers and adulteresses, have you not seen that the friendship of the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore desires to be a friend of the world stands as an enemy of God.THE THREAD
And also they did not hear and respond to their judges, for they went whoring after other gods and bowed down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way which their fathers walked in, hearing and responding to the commands of the LORD. But they did not do so.Judges uses the same root זנה and unfolds the movement: refusing to hear, pursuing other gods, then turning from the way their fathers walked. It makes the image in Chronicles precise: the verse names a change of allegiance as infidelity.
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