What Does 1 Kings 16:1 Mean?
Then the word of the LORD came to Jehu son of Hanani against Baasha, saying,
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
Then the word of the LORD came to Jehu the son of Hanani against Baasha, saying,THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “word” can also mean a matter or affair, so this message enters the very situation it names.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word reaches the reader amid real affairs, naming what power is doing and bringing it under a truth it cannot author. It meets Baasha’s rule directly; the messenger’s name, Jehu (יֵהוּא, Yēhû, “YHWH is he”), echoes the authority behind the address.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that God’s word stays abstract or distant from power: it arrives inside the affair it addresses.
THE ROOT
דְּבַר
dĕvar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
D-B-R
To speak; speech, word, matter, or affair.
Hebrew דָּבָר (dāḇār, “word/matter”) can name both what is spoken and the affair itself. The message is not detached from what it addresses: it arrives aimed at Baasha’s rule. Jehu’s name, יֵהוּא (Yēhû, “YHWH is he”), echoes the authority behind this address.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke; spoke a word.
דִּבֵּר
The spoken form shows the root as active speech, not merely a label for information.
devarim: Words, matters, or affairs.
דְּבָרִים
This branch preserves the link between what is said and the matter being addressed.
THE PATTERN
The word of God enters the world as effective speech: it accomplishes, establishes, and exposes.
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.For he says, and it comes to be; he commands, and it stands.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.The same Hebrew noun דָּבָר (dāḇār, “word/matter”) appears in both verses. There it is joined to the making of the heavens; here it enters the affairs of a king, showing speech reaching what it addresses.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us