What Does 1 Kings 14:29 Mean?
Now the rest of the words of Rehoboam, and all that he did, are they not written in the scroll of the words of the days of the kings of Judah?
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
Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?THE KEY
The Hebrew phrase behind “chronicles” is “words of the days”: what passes in time becomes what remains in language.
THE MEANING
Your actions do not stay sealed inside the moment; they can be gathered into a record and remembered beyond it. A life takes shape through what has been done and can still be named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an action disappears once its moment passes; what is done remains available to memory and account.
THE ROOT
דִּבְרֵי הַיָּמִים
divrei hayamim
GROWS FROM
דבר
Word; matter or thing. The phrase means “words of the days,” referring to the record of events over time.
The record is named through words, but the root can also refer to a matter or thing. What happens in passing days becomes something that can be named, read, and remembered.
ALSO GROWS
davar: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This branch shows how the record can call events “words”: the language holds both what is said and the matter being recounted.
dibber: To speak or declare.
דִּבֵּר
The days’ events endure in the account because they are spoken and written into words.
עָשָׂה
ʿasah
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿasah
To do, make, or bring about.
“did” in this verse is ʿasah. The record preserves what was brought about, not merely a reputation or impression. The deeds take form twice: first as actions, then as words of the days.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaseh: A deed or work.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun names the kind of action that the verse says is entered into the record.
asiyyah: Action or doing.
עֲשִׂיָּה
It keeps the emphasis on what is made real through action, the substance of the account.
THE PATTERN
What passes through lived time can be gathered into a record that remains open to remembrance or reckoning.
You count my wanderings; you set my tears in your skin bottle. Are they not in your count?For God brings every making into judgment, upon every hidden thing, whether good or harm.And I see the dead, small and great, standing before God. The scrolls are opened, and another scroll is opened, which is the book of life. The dead are judged by the things written in the scrolls, according to their works.THE THREAD
For God brings every making into judgment, upon every hidden thing, whether good or harm.“Work” here is מַעֲשֶׂה (maʿaseh), meaning deed or work, from the same root עשה (ʿasah), “do” or “make,” as “did” in this verse. Kings names a record of deeds; Ecclesiastes says every work, even what is secret, remains answerable.
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