What Does 1 Chronicles 6:41 Mean?
The son of Ethni, the son of Zerah, the son of Adaiah.
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 Ethni, the son of Zerah, the son of Adaiah,THE KEY
The repeated “son of” makes ancestry the verse’s whole architecture: each name is carried forward through another.
THE MEANING
Your life is not presented here as a solitary name: identity travels through relationships, one generation linked to another. The verse keeps each link visible even though it gives no story beyond the connection.
THE ROOT
בֵּן
ben
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build, establish; ben is traditionally associated with this root.
“son” in this verse is ben. The repeated ben makes this lineage feel like something built link by link. The verse preserves a family through relation: each name is held in place by the next connection.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build
בָּנָה
It gives the “son of” chain an image of a family being built across generations.
binyan: Building, structure
בִּנְיָן
The verse’s repeated links form a structure that carries each name forward.
זֶרַח
Zeraḥ
GROWS FROM
זרח
Rise, shine, break forth.
Zerah carries the image of rising within this chain of descent. The verse gives no deed to explain the name; its sound still places a note of emergence inside the genealogy.
ALSO GROWS
zarach: To rise, shine
זָרַח
This verb gives Zerah’s name its image of something coming forth.
mizrach: East, the direction of sunrise
מִזְרָח
This branch extends the root’s rising image into the place where light appears.
THE PATTERN
A lineage carries names forward by making each generation’s connection visible.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their births; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari; and the years of the life of Levi were one hundred thirty-seven years.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.Both verses use “son” to connect a name to the line that carries it. Matthew makes the same chain explicit across generations, extending the pattern this short genealogy holds in each repeated link.
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