What Does 1 Chronicles 7:20 Mean?
And the sons of Ephraim were Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son,
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 the sons of Ephraim; Shuthelah, and Bered his son, and Tahath his son, and Eladah his son, and Tahath his son,THE KEY
The repeated “his son” hides a building word: these names form a lineage built one generation at a time.
THE MEANING
Each name stands in a relationship, and the line keeps extending. Your life, too, exists within lines of inheritance and influence: you receive from those before you and carry something forward.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You are a self-made beginning, with no living connection to what came before.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish.
“sons” in this verse is bənê. The word for “son” is related to the root for building. The repeated “his son” makes the genealogy feel like a structure taking shape, each named generation extending the line.
ALSO GROWS
ben: Son.
בֵּן
This is the singular form behind “sons”; its connection to בנה links sonship with the building of a family line.
banah: To build.
בָּנָה
This verb gives the lineage’s repeated father-to-son links a building sense: each generation extends what came before.
binyan: Building or structure.
בִּנְיָן
This branch makes visible the structure formed by the names and relationships in the verse.
אֶפְרַיִם
Efrayim
GROWS FROM
פרה
To bear fruit or be fruitful.
Ephraim’s name is linked to fruitfulness. Here, that meaning takes visible form in a line of descendants, with each name carrying life forward.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit; to be fruitful.
פָּרָה
This is the root associated with Ephraim’s name and frames the descendants as fruitfulness unfolding through a lineage.
peri: Fruit.
פְּרִי
This branch gives fruitfulness a concrete image: what grows from a source and carries life onward.
THE PATTERN
Fruitfulness becomes visible as a line of life carried forward through named generations.
And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."Look, children are the LORD's portion; and the fruit of the womb is a wage.Abraham brought forth Isaac, and Isaac brought forth Jacob, and Jacob brought forth Judah and his brothers.THE THREAD
And he called the name of the second the Fruitful, Ephraim, for God has made me bear fruit in the land of my bending low.Genesis 41:52 links Ephraim’s name with the root פרה (parah), “to be fruitful.” In this genealogy, that fruitfulness appears as a line of named descendants.
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