What Does 1 Kings 3:15 Mean?
Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and sent up rising offerings, and offered wholeness offerings, and made a feast of drinking for all his servants.
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 awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace offerings, and made a feast to all his servants.THE KEY
The verse links Jerusalem and its peace offerings through the language of wholeness, then carries that wholeness to the servants’ table.
THE MEANING
An inward encounter does not stay sealed in sleep: it enters waking life as presence, offering, and a table shared with others. Wholeness reaches beyond the dreamer and the altar to the servants who are fed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a dream is merely private or unreal: the waking response gives the encounter a public, material form through offerings and a shared feast.
THE ROOT
שְׁלָמִים
shelamim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or sound; to bring something to wholeness.
“wholeness offerings” in this verse is shelamim. The root carries wholeness and completeness beneath the English “peace.” Jerusalem’s name, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם (Yerushalayim, the twofold wholeness), carries the same sh-l-m sound-shape; the city and the shelamim meet in a wholeness made visible at the servants’ feast.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This sibling root shows that the offerings’ “peace” reaches beyond the absence of conflict toward a state of wholeness.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact
שָׁלֵם
This form makes the offering’s root meaning concrete: the movement is toward completeness.
THE PATTERN
Wholeness before God becomes visible as food shared with others.
And on the nobles of the children of Israel he did not stretch out his hand, and they saw God, and they ate and drank.You lay out a table before my face, in full view of those who press me. You make my head rich with oil; my cup is soaked full.And they, holding fast day by day with one passion in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.THE THREAD
And you shall slaughter wholeness offerings, and you shall eat there, and rejoice before the face of the LORD your God.Deuteronomy names the same offering as שְׁלָמִים (shelamim, peace offerings) and joins it to eating and rejoicing before the LORD. Its שׁלם (sh-l-m, wholeness) root makes the feast here part of the same movement: wholeness becomes something shared.
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