What Does 1 Chronicles 6:79 Mean?
Kedemoth also with her pasturelands, and Mephaath 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
Kedemoth also with her suburbs, and Mephaath with her suburbs:THE KEY
The verse counts the open land around a place as part of the place itself: each town is named together with its surrounding ground.
THE MEANING
This verse holds each place together with its surrounding ground: Kedemoth and Mephaath are each named with their open lands. The surrounding space belongs in the same count as the town, not as an afterthought. Kedemoth carries the Hebrew root’s sense of what is before, eastward, or ancient.
THE ROOT
מִגְרָשֶׁיהָ
migrasheha
GROWS FROM
גרש
g-r-sh
To drive out or cast away; מִגְרָשׁ (migrash) means the open land around a town, though its derivation from this root is uncertain.
“pasturelands” in this verse is migrasheha. The Hebrew name for these surrounding lands may echo the idea of space set outward from the built place. That possible link lets “suburbs” suggest more than proximity: it names the open margin as part of the town’s allotted space.
ALSO GROWS
garash: To drive out or expel
גָּרַשׁ
This is the proposed root connection behind the idea of land set beyond the town’s built center; the derivation is not certain.
migrash: Open land around a town
מִגְרָשׁ
This is the singular form of the word translated “suburbs,” naming the surrounding ground itself.
קְדֵמוֹת
qedemoth
GROWS FROM
קדם
q-d-m
To be before or in front; the root also carries the senses of eastward and ancient.
Kedemoth is more than a bare label: its name carries the root’s overlapping sense of what lies ahead, what is eastward, and what is ancient. English keeps only the place-name, while the Hebrew preserves that spatial and temporal resonance.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: East, the front, or ancient time
קֶדֶם
This shared root gives Kedemoth its sense of direction and what came before.
qadam: To precede or come before
קָדַם
This verb shows the root’s basic movement toward what is in front.
THE PATTERN
A town and its surrounding open land are counted as one unit of settled life.
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.Kedemoth with her pastures, and Mephaath with her pastures; four cities.THE THREAD
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he set Adam, whom he had shaped.Kedemoth shares the consonantal root קדם (q-d-m), meaning what is before or eastward, with קֶדֶם (qedem), the word rendered “eastward” here. In Genesis, that root carries a garden-facing sense of what lies before; the town-name preserves the same spatial and temporal resonance.
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