What Does 1 Chronicles 6:67 Mean?
And they gave to them, of the cities of refuge, Shechem in the mountain of Ephraim with her pasturelands. They gave also Gezer with her pasturelands.
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 they gave unto them, of the cities of refuge, Shechem in mount Ephraim with her suburbs; they gave also Gezer with her suburbs,THE KEY
Refuge is a place that receives the fleeing person, and here it has a name, a boundary, and surrounding ground.
THE MEANING
The verse holds refuge as a place someone can enter when danger is real: a named city and the land around it. Shelter does not make the threat unreal; it gives endangered life somewhere to be received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that protection is only an inward feeling, without a real place or resources.
THE ROOT
מִקְלָט
miqlāṭ
GROWS FROM
קלט
receive, take in, contain
The noun מִקְלָט (miqlāṭ, refuge) grows from קלט (q-l-ṭ, receive or take in). Refuge is more than escape from danger: it is a place that takes the fleeing person in.
ALSO GROWS
miqlāṭ: refuge; a place of safety
מִקְלָט
This is the word used for the refuge in the verse: shelter is named as a place that receives someone.
qālaṭ: receive, take in, contain
קָלַט
The verbal root brings out the action held inside the refuge: taking in the one who flees.
qelīṭā: reception, absorption
קְלִיטָה
This later Hebrew derivative preserves the root’s sense of taking something in.
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrāshehā
GROWS FROM
גרש
drive out, expel
“pasturelands” in this verse is migrāshehā. The KJV’s “suburbs” renders מִגְרָשׁ (migrāsh, open common land around a city), related to גָּרַשׁ (gārash, drive out or expel). Refuge here includes surrounding ground beyond the inhabited center, giving the shelter a defined extent.
ALSO GROWS
migrāsh: open common land around a city
מִגְרָשׁ
It names the land given along with the city, so the refuge includes more than the town itself.
gārash: drive out, expel
גָּרַשׁ
This root connection gives the surrounding land a boundary sense: the refuge extends around the city’s inhabited center.
שְׁכֶם
shekhem
GROWS FROM
שכם
shoulder
“Shechem” in this verse is shekhem. The place-name שְׁכֶם (shekhem, shoulder) carries a load-bearing image into the list. Beside a word for a receiving refuge, it makes shelter legible as a place where a burden can be carried.
ALSO GROWS
shekhem: shoulder
שְׁכֶם
The city’s name is the Hebrew word for shoulder, placing a bearing image inside the name of this refuge.
shikhmō: his shoulder
שִׁכְמוֹ
This possessive form keeps the same shoulder word and its image of carrying.
THE PATTERN
Refuge is made concrete as a place or protection a person can enter and hold onto.
Among the cities you shall give the Levites, there shall be six cities of escape, which you shall appoint for the crusher, so that he may flee there; and you shall add forty-two cities to them.To the chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. God is our refuge and strength, a help found very near in the narrow place.So that through two unshifting deeds, in which it is without power for God to lie, we might have a strong comfort, we who have fled for refuge to grip the hope lying before us.THE THREAD
Among the cities you shall give the Levites, there shall be six cities of escape, which you shall appoint for the crusher, so that he may flee there; and you shall add forty-two cities to them.It uses the same Hebrew noun מִקְלָט (miqlāṭ, refuge), showing that the named city belongs to a wider provision of places someone can flee into. The shared word connects this verse’s specific shelter with a larger structure of refuge.
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