What Does 1 Kings 14:23 Mean?
For they also built for themselves high places, and standing stones, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.
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
For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.THE KEY
The verse portrays devotion as something that can claim an entire landscape, from exposed hilltops to the shade beneath every green tree.
THE MEANING
Here, devotion takes built form: raised sites, standing pillars, and Asherah symbols occupy every kind of terrain. The spread from high hills to the shade of every green tree makes the landscape itself a place where allegiance is marked.
THE ROOT
וַיִּבְנוּ
vayivnu
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
banah (בָּנָה): to build or build up.
“built” in this verse is vayivnu. The verb names more than putting objects in place: Hebrew also uses this root for building up a household. Here, devotion becomes a constructed environment that people can inhabit and repeat.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: building, structure
בִּנְיָן
This related noun makes the built character of the worship sites explicit: they form structures within the landscape.
mivneh: structure, form
מִבְנֶה
This branch shows how the root can describe an arrangement or shape, illuminating how the verse presents devotion as a landscape-wide arrangement.
מַצֵּבוֹת
matzevot
GROWS FROM
נצב
n-ts-b
natsav (נָצַב): to stand, take a position, or be stationed.
“images” in this verse is matzevot. The word matzevot refers to standing pillars or monuments. Its root gives the objects a physical presence: they are set upright as fixed markers, giving devotion a place to stand across the landscape.
ALSO GROWS
nitsav: standing, positioned
נִצָּב
This form carries the root’s sense of being set in place, clarifying the upright, stationed quality of the pillars.
matsav: position, station
מַצָּב
This noun connects standing objects with fixed positions, echoing how the verse places these markers across hills and beneath trees.
THE PATTERN
When devotion takes the form of human-made objects and sites, those forms occupy the places where allegiance is enacted.
You shall surely make perish all the places where the nations you shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree.Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.And they exchanged the weight of the imperishable God for an image shaped like perishable humankind, and of winged ones, four-footed ones, and crawling things.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Both verses share בנה (banah, “build”): here, people build worship sites; in Genesis 16:2, Sarai says “obtain children,” while the Hebrew phrase means “be built up through her.” The same root reaches from erected places to the hoped-for building of a household.
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