What Does 1 Kings 15:6 Mean?
And there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life.
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 there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life.THE KEY
Rehoboam’s name carries breadth, yet the verse places him in a war that fills all his days: a spacious name cannot make a divided relationship whole.
THE MEANING
The verse names war as a relation that fills a whole lifetime, not a single outbreak. Conflict can become the atmosphere surrounding a life when the division between two sides persists.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that every conflict is only a passing episode dissolves here: war can persist through every day of a life.
THE ROOT
מִלְחָמָה
milḥāmāh
GROWS FROM
ל־ח־ם
l-ḥ-m
Fight, engage in battle.
The noun for war grows from a verb of fighting, so Hebrew presents conflict as an action that keeps being enacted. Here that action becomes the relation between two sides and stretches across all the days of a life.
ALSO GROWS
lāḥam: To fight or wage war.
לָחַם
The verb makes clear that war is something repeatedly done, not merely a label for a tense situation.
yillāḥēm: Will fight.
יִלָּחֵם
This form from the same root appears in Exodus 14:14, where the LORD is the one who fights.
רְחַבְעָם
Reḥaḇʿām
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ב
r-ḥ-b
Be broad, widen, make spacious.
Rehoboam’s name joins רָחַב (rāḥaḇ, to become broad) with עָם (ʿām, people), carrying the image of a people made broad. The verse places that breadth inside a relation of war, setting spaciousness in the name beside division in the lived relation.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥāḇ: Broad, wide.
רָחָב
This is the breadth carried in Rehoboam’s name, set beside the conflict that fills the verse.
merḥāḇ: An open or spacious place.
מֶרְחָב
This branch names room to expand, sharpening the contrast with a relationship held in war.
THE PATTERN
When division becomes the enduring relation between two sides, conflict can occupy a whole community’s shared life.
And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram's cattle and the herdsmen of Lot's cattle, and the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then settled in the land.From where do wars and battles come among you? Do they not come from here, from your pleasures that wage war in your limbs?THE THREAD
The LORD will fight for you, and you will hold your tongue.The same root that forms the word for war here appears in יִלָּחֵם (yillāḥēm, will fight) in Exodus. There, the LORD is the one acting, opening a different shape for the same struggle.
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