What Does 1 Kings 3:1 Mean?
Solomon married into the Great House, king of Egypt, and took the daughter of the Great House, and brought her into the city of David, until he had finished the building of his own house, and the house of the LORD, and the wall of Jerusalem all around.
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 Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh’s daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the LORD, and the wall of Jerusalem round about.THE KEY
The city of wholeness is still under construction when a bond with the narrow place enters its gates.
THE MEANING
As you read, two movements occupy the same space: Solomon’s bond with Egypt and the building of Jerusalem’s houses and wall. The city’s wholeness is still taking form while that bond enters it; the verse holds both realities together.
THE ROOT
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
tsarar
To bind or constrict; to make narrow.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim carries the image of the narrow place, so Pharaoh’s daughter brings a bond with constriction into David’s city. The verse sets that entry beside Jerusalem’s unfinished building, holding narrowness and the making of wholeness in one frame.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, constricted.
צַר
This is the narrowness carried in the name Mitzrayim.
tsarah: Distress, trouble.
צָרָה
Distress is narrowness experienced as pressure, giving the name’s image an inward dimension.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שָׁלַם
shalam
To be whole, complete, or intact.
The name carries the sense of wholeness, yet the wall around Jerusalem is still being built. Here wholeness is a place taking shape, with its boundary not yet complete.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
The branch gives the city’s name its sense of a space made whole.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch sharpens the contrast between Jerusalem’s name and its unfinished wall.
וַיִּתְחַתֵּן
wayyitḥattēn
GROWS FROM
חָתַן
ḥatan
To become related by marriage; to enter a bond of kinship through marriage.
“married into” in this verse is wayyitḥattēn. The verb presents Solomon’s tie to Pharaoh as a family bond, not merely a diplomatic arrangement. The root makes the alliance intimate: Egypt enters the city through marriage.
ALSO GROWS
ḥātān: Bridegroom; son-in-law.
חָתָן
This branch names the marriage relation created by Solomon’s union with Pharaoh’s daughter.
ḥōtēn: Father-in-law.
חֹתֵן
This branch shows the kinship network the marriage creates between Solomon and Pharaoh.
THE PATTERN
Movement from constriction toward wholeness takes the form of leaving a narrow place for room to live and grow.
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.THE THREAD
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.The name Egypt appears in both verses as Mitzrayim, the narrow place. Here Pharaoh’s daughter enters Jerusalem while its wholeness is still being built; Exodus shows the paired movement outward, from Egypt into a large land.
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