What Does 1 Chronicles 6:76 Mean?
And out of the tribe of Naphtali, Kedesh in Galilee with her pasturelands, and Hammon with hers, and Kirjathaim 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 out of the tribe of Naphtali; Kedesh in Galilee with her suburbs, and Hammon with her suburbs, and Kirjathaim with her suburbs.THE KEY
What the verse calls “suburbs” is open grazing ground, so each town is named together with the space around it.
THE MEANING
The verse names three towns and repeatedly includes the open ground around each one; Kedesh, “set apart,” is one of them. Set-apartness is pictured as a lived place with its surrounding space included, not as a center cut off from ordinary life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The sacred is confined to a building or fenced center, and the ground beyond it has no part in sacred life.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrāšêhā
GROWS FROM
גרש
Drive out or send away; the noun refers to open common or pasture ground around a city.
“pasturelands” in this verse is migrāšêhā. The Hebrew word behind “suburbs” names the open land around a town, traditionally linked to the verb “drive out,” as ground where herds are driven to graze. Each town is thus named with living space beyond its center as part of the same allotment.
ALSO GROWS
migrāsh: Open common or pasture ground around a city
מִגְרָשׁ
This is the singular form behind the repeated word in the verse, making the surrounding land part of each town’s description.
legarēsh: To drive out or send away
לְגָרֵשׁ
This verb shares the root and gives the pastureland’s name an outward movement: animals are driven from the town into open ground.
קֶדֶשׁ
Qedesh
GROWS FROM
קדש
Set apart as sacred.
Kedesh carries the root of “set apart” in its name. Here that name belongs to an inhabited town described together with its surrounding open ground, so set-apartness appears as a lived place with room around it.
ALSO GROWS
qādash: To set apart or make sacred
קָדַשׁ
This verb is the action carried in the name Kedesh.
qōdesh: Set-apartness or sacredness
קֹדֶשׁ
This noun shares the name’s root and shows the quality expressed by Kedesh.
miqdāsh: Sanctuary, a set-apart place
מִקְדָּשׁ
The same root can name a sacred place; in this verse, it also names a town within the inhabited landscape.
THE PATTERN
Set-apart dwelling takes shape in inhabited life and includes the space around it.
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.But the field of the pasturelands of their cities shall not be sold, for it is their holding of the ages.Have you not seen that you are God's temple, and that the breath of God dwells in you?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 word for the open common ground around the Levitical cities. Its wording makes clear that the town and its surrounding land belong together in the allotment.
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