What Does 1 Chronicles 6:34 Mean?
The son of Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Eliel, the son of Toah.
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
The son of Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Eliel, the son of Toah,THE KEY
Inside this chain of fathers and sons, Jeroham’s name carries compassion forward as part of the family line.
THE MEANING
Your life appears here within a chain of relationships: each man is named through the one before him. One name in that chain carries the language of compassion, so kinship and care meet inside this genealogy.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse unsettles the idea that a person stands as a self-contained unit: each name here is carried through a relationship.
THE ROOT
יְרֹחָם
Yərōḥām
GROWS FROM
רחם
r-ḥ-m
Compassionate care; to show compassion.
Jeroham carries the root of compassion, which also names the womb. The language links compassion with the body’s sheltering, life-bearing place, so care is held within this chain of fathers and sons.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥam: To show compassion or tender care.
רָחַם
This verb gives Jeroham’s name its compassionate root.
reḥem: Womb.
רֶחֶם
The shared root connects compassion with the place that shelters and bears life.
raḥamim: Compassion; tender mercies.
רַחֲמִים
This plural form shows the same root’s broader language of care.
אֶלְקָנָה
ʾElqānāh
GROWS FROM
קנה
q-n-h
To acquire, gain, or possess; in some biblical uses, to create.
Elkanah joins the name for God with a root that can mean acquiring or bringing into being. The name can therefore hold both belonging to God and a source from which life comes.
ALSO GROWS
qānāh: To acquire, buy, or possess.
קָנָה
This verb supplies the root sense carried in Elkanah’s name.
miqneh: Possessions or livestock.
מִקְנֶה
This related noun shows the root’s sense of what is acquired or held.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes identity visible by naming people within a chain of generations.
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.Now these are the births of Perez. Perez brought forth Hezron.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.Jeroham carries the Hebrew compassion root, and Psalm 103 uses that same root for a father’s pity toward children. The genealogy’s father-and-son chain is held within a word that also evokes the womb’s sheltering care.
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