What Does 1 Kings 1:45 Mean?
And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon, and they have come up from there rejoicing, so that the city roared. This is the sound that you have heard.
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 Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him king in Gihon: and they are come up from thence rejoicing, so that the city rang again. This is the noise that ye have heard.THE KEY
The anointing becomes unmistakable when the city itself turns the king’s recognition into sound.
THE MEANING
A calling takes public shape when a person is set apart and recognized; rejoicing carries that recognition beyond those gathered at the spring. The city’s tumult is the change becoming audible to everyone who hears it.
THE ROOT
מָשַׁח
mashach
GROWS FROM
משח
To smear or spread; to anoint with oil.
“anointed him king” in this verse is mashach. The same root names both the act and the anointed person, מָשִׁיחַ (mashiach, anointed one). Anointing marks a person for a charge, and here that marking moves from the act at Gihon into the city’s rejoicing.
ALSO GROWS
mashiach: Anointed one
מָשִׁיחַ
The title names a person through the act of anointing, joining identity to the role they are set apart for.
mishchah: Anointing; anointing oil
מִשְׁחָה
The substance and the act share the root, showing that the mark of the calling is made visible.
נָתָן
Natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
Nathan’s name carries the same root as the verb “give, set, place.” As he helps anoint the king, his name echoes the act of placing someone into a public role.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place
נָתַן
The verb’s meanings echo the act of setting the king into his role.
mattan: Gift
מַתָּן
This branch makes the root’s movement of giving concrete as something given.
צָדוֹק
Tsadoq
GROWS FROM
צדק
To be right or aligned.
Zadok’s name grows from the root of alignment. With the priest beside the prophet in the anointing, the scene places kingship alongside the language of right placement, rather than leaving it as a bare title.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Alignment; what is right
צֶדֶק
The root’s language of alignment gives the priest’s name a resonance within the public setting of the king’s anointing.
tsaddiq: One who is aligned or right
צַדִּיק
This branch describes a person through the state named by the root.
THE PATTERN
Anointing marks a public calling whose work reaches beyond the one anointed.
So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David cut a covenant with them there before the face of the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the breath of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.The same Hebrew root, מָשַׁח (mashach, to anoint), marks David here and the king in 1 Kings. Here the anointing is followed by the LORD’s presence coming upon David, opening the act as a passage into a calling as well as public recognition.
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