What Does 1 Chronicles 6:62 Mean?
And to the sons of Gershom throughout their families, out of the tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe of Naphtali, and out of the tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, 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 to the sons of Gershom throughout their families out of the tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe of Naphtali, and out of the tribe of Manasseh in Bashan, thirteen cities.THE KEY
Gershom’s families receive thirteen cities across four tribes, making belonging a network of places rather than one territory.
THE MEANING
The verse makes belonging tangible: one family line has thirteen named places among several tribes. Shared life is held across communities, with each place counted rather than left abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that belonging requires a single territory of one’s own: here, one family is placed across several tribes.
THE ROOT
מַטֶּה
matteh
GROWS FROM
נטה
natah
To stretch out, extend, or incline; matteh is commonly linked with this root.
The Hebrew word translated “tribe” is also used for a staff or rod, and is linked with the idea of extension. In this verse, the allotment reaches across several tribal territories, giving Gershom’s families a place within the wider people.
ALSO GROWS
natah: To stretch out, extend, or incline
נָטָה
This verb echoes the way the allotment extends through the territories named in the verse.
matteh: Staff, rod; tribe or tribal division
מַטֶּה
The same word holds both a concrete object and a social division, bringing the verse’s geography into view as a series of distinct territories.
THE PATTERN
A community’s shared life is sustained through concrete provision distributed across many places.
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.All the cities of the Levites within the holding of the children of Israel were forty and eight cities with their pastures.For none among them lacked, for as many as owned fields or houses sold them and carried the prices of what was sold, and set them down at the feet of the sent ones, and it was given out to each as anyone had need.THE THREAD
And concerning the cities you shall give from the holding of the children of Israel, from those who have many you shall give many, but from those who have few you shall give few; each one shall give of his cities to the Levites according to the inheritance he inherits.This verse describes how the cities come from each tribe’s own inheritance, in proportion to what it holds. Here, that shared arrangement becomes specific: thirteen cities from four tribal territories.
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