What Does 1 Chronicles 6:9 Mean?
And Ahimaaz brought forth Azariah, and Azariah brought forth Johanan.
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 Ahimaaz begat Azariah, and Azariah begat Johanan,THE KEY
The names move from “Yah has helped” to “Yah has shown favor,” making the lineage read as help carried forward into favor.
THE MEANING
This sequence holds help and favor within a line of lives, one brought forth after another. Your life, too, is part of a continuity: what sustains you can become part of what you carry forward.
THE ROOT
עֲזַרְיָה
Azaryah
GROWS FROM
עזר
ʿ-z-r
Help, aid.
Azariah joins the root of help with Yah, so the name declares help as part of his nature. Placed before Johanan, it lets the line sound like help opening into favor.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: Assistance or one who helps.
עֵזֶר
This branch makes the help in Azariah’s name tangible: help can be a presence that comes to someone’s aid.
ʿāzar: To give aid.
עָזַר
The verb gives the name its active force: Yah helps.
יוֹחָנָן
Yôḥānān
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
Show favor.
Johanan compresses Yah and the root חנן, “show favor,” into a name. Following Azariah, it makes the names read as a movement from help to favor.
ALSO GROWS
ḥānan: To favor or regard with kindness.
חָנַן
This verb carries the meaning embedded in Johanan’s name.
ḥēn: Favor or gracious regard.
חֵן
This related form gives the root’s favor a concrete name, as in “found favor.”
יָלַד
yālad
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
Bear, bring forth.
The repeated verb gives the line a generative movement: each person is brought forth into the next link. Its root holds the act of birth together with the child who is brought forth.
ALSO GROWS
yālad: To give birth or beget.
יָלַד
This is the verb repeated in the verse, marking each new link in the line.
yeled: A child, one brought forth.
יֶלֶד
This noun shares the root and shows the other side of the same movement: the one who is brought forth.
THE PATTERN
What one generation carries can be brought forth as living continuity in another.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.We will not hide them from their children, recounting to the generation that follows the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonders that he has done.When I recall the trust without a mask that is in you, which first made its home in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, I am persuaded that it lives in you also.THE THREAD
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.The word rendered “grace” here is חֵן (ḥēn, favor), from the same root family as חנן in Johanan’s name. The favor named in Johanan is also something found and encountered.
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