What Does 1 Kings 17:5 Mean?
So he went and did according to the word of the LORD, for he went and settled by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.
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
So he went and did according unto the word of the LORD: for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.THE KEY
The word of the LORD becomes geography: Elijah goes where it leads and makes his dwelling there.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in the moment when direction becomes a lived place: the word is followed in movement, and movement settles into dwelling. Elijah’s repeated going and final staying make trust tangible as a presence where the word has led.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a received word matters only as an idea: here the word becomes a location and a settled presence.
THE ROOT
דְּבַר־יְהוָה
devar YHWH
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak; a word, matter, or affair.
Dābār can name both a spoken word and the matter or event at hand. Here, the word is bound to what Elijah actually enters: he goes and dwells, and the spoken direction takes shape as a place.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: A spoken word, matter, or event.
דָּבָר
The word directing Elijah is joined to the lived matter of where he goes and stays.
dibbēr: To speak or declare.
דִּבֵּר
The speaking and the word share the same root, holding direction and its spoken source together.
כְּרִית
Kerith
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
To cut, cut down, or cut off.
“Cherith” in this verse is Kerith. The place-name Kerith is commonly linked to the root כרת, “to cut” or “cut off.” That root also appears in the phrase “cut a covenant,” so its branches can name both separation and a binding commitment.
ALSO GROWS
kārat: To cut, cut down, or cut off; in כָּרַת בְּרִית (kārat berit), “to cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת
The name of Elijah’s place carries the same root that can mark a covenant made through cutting.
keritut: A cutting off or dismissal, including divorce.
כְּרִיתוּת
This branch keeps the sense of separation audible in the brook’s name.
וַיֵּשֶׁב
wayyēshev
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-sh-b
To sit, remain, or dwell.
The verb for dwelling also carries the sense of sitting and staying. Elijah does not merely pass the brook: the verse shows movement arriving at settled presence.
ALSO GROWS
yāshav: To sit down, remain, or inhabit.
יָשַׁב
This root holds the verse’s shift from going to staying.
moshāv: A dwelling place or settlement.
מוֹשָׁב
This related form shows how the root of sitting and remaining can name a settled place.
THE PATTERN
A received word becomes visible as movement that leads into a place of dwelling.
So Abram went, as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out of Haran.Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.His mother said to the servants, Whatever he says to you, do it.THE THREAD
So Abram went, as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out of Haran.The Hebrew root דבר (d-b-r), meaning “speak” and “word,” links the LORD’s spoken direction to Abram’s departure, as it does Elijah’s. In both verses, the word takes the shape of a route someone actually travels.
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