What Does 1 Kings 10:6 Mean?
And she said to the king, "It was a true word that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom."
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 she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.THE KEY
The Hebrew term דָּבָר (dābār, “word/matter”) lies beneath both “report” and “acts,” so the words about a life and the matters of that life share one root.
THE MEANING
A report reaches you as words, while the life it describes has substance that can be encountered. This verse holds what is heard together with what is done, showing truth as an account that corresponds to a person’s visible wisdom and deeds.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A report is only talk, separate from the reality it describes.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dābār
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; as a noun, word, matter, or affair.
English separates “report” from “acts”; Hebrew places both under דָּבָר (dābār, word/matter), with the report as דָּבָר (dābār, word/matter) and “acts” as דְּבָרִים (devarim, matters/affairs). The repeated root binds what is said about a life to the concrete matters that make the account true.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, speech, or matter.
דָּבָר
The verse calls the report a דָּבָר (dābār, word/matter), making the heard account itself a matter that can be true.
devarim: Words, matters, or affairs.
דְּבָרִים
The king’s “acts” are דְּבָרִים (devarim, matters/affairs), so the account and the realities it describes share the same root.
THE PATTERN
A heard word gains its full measure when what is seen confirms and exceeds the report.
But I did not lean my weight on their words until I came and my eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and your prosperity add to the report that I heard.As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God; God makes it stand for the ages. Selah.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.THE THREAD
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.In both verses, דָּבָר (dābār, word/matter) names speech with substance: a report about deeds here and the LORD’s spoken word as what sustains life there. That shared root links what is heard to what is real enough to live by.
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