What Does 1 Chronicles 6:60 Mean?
And out of the tribe of Benjamin, Geba with her pasturelands, and Alemeth with hers, and Anathoth with her pasturelands. All their cities throughout their families were thirteen cities.
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 out of the tribe of Benjamin; Geba with her suburbs, and Alemeth with her suburbs, and Anathoth with her suburbs. All their cities throughout their families were thirteen cities.THE KEY
Each Levitical town is named with its surrounding open land, so the allotted dwelling reaches beyond the walls into the ground around it.
THE MEANING
The Benjamin towns are named one by one, each paired with open land around it; the closing count gathers the larger family allotment into thirteen cities. Levitical dwelling has a distributed address, with the land surrounding each settlement included in its place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Sacred service has an address only at one central site.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrasheha
GROWS FROM
גרשׁ
Drive out, expel, send away.
“pasturelands” in this verse is migrasheha. The word for open land around a town is commonly linked to the root for driving or sending away. That shared seed lets the town’s outer boundary sound together with its built center: each named dwelling place includes ground beyond the houses.
ALSO GROWS
garash: Drive out, expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This is the verbal form linked to the open-land noun, carrying an outward movement in the same root.
megorashet: A woman sent away or divorced.
מְגֹרֶשֶׁת
The same root appears in language of being sent beyond a bond; here its related land-word names the open ground around a settlement.
עַלֶּמֶת
Alemeth
GROWS FROM
עלם
Hide, conceal.
Alemeth’s name carries the sense of hiddenness within a list of plainly named towns. What is concealed still has a place in the counted community.
ALSO GROWS
alam: Hide or conceal.
עָלַם
This verb supplies the name’s root sense of hiddenness.
ne'elam: Hidden, concealed.
נֶעְלָם
This form makes the name’s quality explicit: the concealed is still present within the allotment.
גֶּבַע
Geba
GROWS FROM
גבע
Hill, elevated mound.
Geba’s name means hill, giving this list a mark of actual terrain as well as family and town. The allotment is grounded in named places, not an abstract count.
ALSO GROWS
giv'ah: Hill.
גִּבְעָה
This related noun carries the same elevated-land meaning heard in Geba’s name.
Giv'on: Gibeon, a place name associated with height.
גִּבְעוֹן
The related place name echoes the same hill-root across the landscape.
THE PATTERN
Service is carried through a network of distinct places, with local dwelling and provision included in the pattern.
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.Anathoth with her pastures, and Almon with her pastures; four cities.So those who were scattered passed through every place, bringing the good news of the word.THE THREAD
Command the children of Israel to give the Levites cities to settle in from the inheritance of their holding, and you shall also give the Levites pasturelands for the cities round about them.Numbers uses the same Hebrew land-word behind “suburbs” to name the open ground allotted around each Levitical city. Read beside this list, the surrounding land is part of the provision itself, not an afterthought to the town names.
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