What Does 1 Chronicles 8:9 Mean?
And from Hodesh his wife he brought forth Jobab, and Zibia, and Mesha, and Malcam.
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 he begat of Hodesh his wife, Jobab, and Zibia, and Mesha, and Malcham,THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “begat” also gives “child” and “generations,” so the verb carries both the birth and the family line it opens.
THE MEANING
A life enters a family line through relationship, and that line continues through particular, named children. Hodesh has a place in the named line as their mother, and each child remains distinct by name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a genealogy holds only an abstract line of fathers: Hodesh is named as the mother, and each child is named as an individual.
THE ROOT
וַיּוֹלֶד
vayyoled
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear or bring forth; beget
“brought forth” in this verse is vayyoled. English separates “beget,” “child,” and “generations.” Hebrew grows them from ילד: bringing forth, the child, and the continuing line are one connected movement, so the verb carries the future genealogy inside the birth.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child, boy
יֶלֶד
The act of begetting and the child it brings forth share one root, joining the action to its outcome.
toledot: generations, genealogies
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The same root names the line of descendants, connecting this birth to the family’s continuing generations.
חֹדֶשׁ
Chodesh
GROWS FROM
חדש
to be new; renew
Hodesh carries the sense of a new moon or month and is connected to the root for newness and renewal. That name lets renewal echo within the family line, where each generation arrives as a distinct life.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: new
חָדָשׁ
This adjective shares Hodesh’s root, placing the sense of newness within her name.
chiddesh: renew, make new
חִדֵּשׁ
This verb makes the root’s renewal explicit, echoing the recurring beginnings carried by generations.
THE PATTERN
Continuity takes shape as what is brought forth receives names and passes into the next generation.
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.So that the generation that follows might know them, the children yet to be born, who will rise and recount them to their children.The book of the origin of Jesus, the anointed one, son of David, son of Abraham.THE THREAD
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.Genesis 4:1 uses ילד (yalad) for “bare,” while this verse uses the same root for “begat.” The English verbs divide what Hebrew holds in one seed: bringing a child forth into a named family line.
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