What Does 1 Chronicles 8:8 Mean?
And Shaharaim brought forth children in the field of Moab, after he had sent them away. Hushim and Baara were his wives.
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 Shaharaim begat children in the country of Moab, after he had sent them away; Hushim and Baara were his wives.THE KEY
The verb behind “sent them away” is shalach, a root that can mean release as well as dispatch, so the passage holds the movement and its cost together.
THE MEANING
Here, separation and continuation occupy the same frame: Shaharaim fathers children in Moab after sending Hushim and Baara away. The verse keeps the wives, the children, and the rupture in one line, without making the sending sound gentle.
THE ROOT
שִׁלְחוֹ
shilḥo
GROWS FROM
שׁלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send, send forth, or release.
English “sent them away” names one particular act, but שׁלח ranges from dispatching to releasing. The root does not make the act benevolent: here, it names a separation whose consequences remain in view.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release.
שָׁלַח
The same verb appears in the command “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1), showing that this root can name release from confinement as well as sending someone away.
shillēaḥ: Send away, dismiss.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This form makes the separation explicit; it illuminates how the verse’s “sent them away” can carry the force of dismissal.
THE PATTERN
A sending carries people out of one place or power, while the scene determines whether it means deliverance or painful separation.
And Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of waters, and gave them to Hagar, setting them on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away. And she went and strayed in the wilderness of Beersheba.And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen.THE THREAD
And Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of waters, and gave them to Hagar, setting them on her shoulder, and the child, and sent her away. And she went and strayed in the wilderness of Beersheba.Genesis 21:14 uses the same שׁלח (sh-l-ḥ) root when Abraham sends Hagar and her child away. That parallel shows why “release” does not soften the separation named in Shaharaim’s verse.
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