What Does 1 Chronicles 6:43 Mean?
The son of Jahath, the son of Gershom, the son of Levi.
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 Jahath, the son of Gershom, the son of Levi.THE KEY
The repeated “son” turns a genealogy into architecture: one life is built into the next.
THE MEANING
This line names a person through the lives that precede him: Jahath belongs in Gershom’s line, and Gershom in Levi’s. Your own life, too, enters a story already underway; here, identity takes shape through connection and generations.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a life begins entirely with itself gives way to a picture of identity received through relationship.
THE ROOT
בֵּן
ben
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
Build; establish.
The Hebrew word for son, ben, is linked to banah, meaning “to build.” The repeated word lets this family line read as a structure taking shape through successive lives, a connection made explicit when Sarai speaks of being “built” through children.
ALSO GROWS
banah: To build or establish.
בָּנָה
This root gives the verse’s repeated “son” a building resonance: each generation forms part of a continuing family structure.
binyan: Building; structure.
בִּנְיָן
This branch makes visible the architectural image carried by the verse’s chain of descent.
THE PATTERN
A life is carried forward through named relationships and what passes between generations.
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.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.When I recall the trust without a mask that is in you, which first made its home in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, I am persuaded that it lives in you also.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.In Hebrew, Sarai’s phrase translated “obtain children” uses banah, “to build.” That shared root lets the “son” in this genealogy resonate as part of a life and family being built across generations.
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