What Does 1 Chronicles 7:36 Mean?
The sons of Zophah were Suah, and Harnepher, and Shual, and Beri, and Imrah,
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
The sons of Zophah; Suah, and Harnepher, and Shual, and Beri, and Imrah,THE KEY
The word “sons” carries the image of building: this list is a family taking shape through named lives.
THE MEANING
The verse preserves a lineage through its actual names: Suah, Harnepher, Shual, Beri, and Imrah. Continuity takes shape in particular lives, whether or not their stories are preserved. The life reaching you is also carried through people, not an idea alone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that only famous or fully explained lives matter: even a name without a surviving story belongs to the line.
THE ROOT
בְּנֵי
bənê
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
to build, establish
“sons” in this verse is bənê. The Hebrew word for “son,” בֵּן (ben, son), is traditionally linked to בנה (banah, to build). The names here make lineage feel like a structure taking shape through successive lives, rather than an abstract family record.
ALSO GROWS
banah: to build or establish
בָּנָה
This verb gives “sons” its architectural resonance: a family line is built through those who belong to it.
mivneh: a structure or building
מִבְנֶה
This branch makes the list’s shape visible: each named person belongs to a continuing structure.
THE PATTERN
A line of continuity is carried by particular named lives.
This is the book of the births of Adam. In the day that God created the ground-being, in the likeness of God he made him.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room, where they were staying, Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Burning One, and Judas the brother of James.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.The verb rendered “obtain children” draws on בנה (banah, to build), the root linked to “son” here. It reveals the family line as something built through the lives named within it.
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