What Does 1 Chronicles 8:12 Mean?
The sons of Elpaal, Eber, and Misham, and Shemed, who built Ono and Lod with the towns thereof.
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 Elpaal; Eber, and Misham, and Shamed, who built Ono, and Lod, with the towns thereof:THE KEY
Hebrew places builders between sons and a city’s “daughters,” making a town read like kinship made inhabitable.
THE MEANING
A name and a family line take shape as places other people inhabit. The sons are named as builders, and the city’s surrounding settlements are called its daughters, so belonging extends outward and holds a community. What is made in one place can become home for others.
THE ROOT
בָּנוּ
bānû
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build or establish.
The sound pattern keeps kinship close to construction: בְּנֵי (bənê, “sons”) opens the verse, בָּנוּ (bānû, “they built”) names the act, and בְּנֹתֶיהָ (bənōteha, “her daughters”) is the Hebrew phrase behind “the towns thereof.” The city is rendered as a family, a place with dependent places held within its life; this is a consonant echo, not a claim that all three forms share one root.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: Building, structure.
בִּנְיָן
This branch makes visible the lasting form that the builders give to a shared place.
mivneh: Structure, building.
מִבְנֶה
It carries the root from the act of building into the thing that can hold and shelter a community.
THE PATTERN
Building gives shared life a place, while that place’s endurance depends on what sustains it.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.Every wise woman builds her house, but folly tears it down with her hands.Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.Psalm 127 uses the same Hebrew root, בנה (banah, “build”), as “built” here. The two verses hold together the making of a city and its keeping: building gives shared ground form, and keeping lets that place endure.
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