What Does 1 Kings 5:11 Mean?
And Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat, for his house to eat, and twenty measures of beaten oil; thus Solomon gave to Hiram year by year.
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 gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.THE KEY
The yearly gift makes a bond visible at household scale: grain and oil keep arriving where daily life happens.
THE MEANING
Provision takes a household shape: food to sustain it and oil alongside it, arriving year after year. The giving has measure and rhythm; it is material support that returns.
THE ROOT
נָתַן
natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, or place.
“gave” in this verse is natan. The same verb frames both Solomon’s initial gift and the yearly giving that follows. Its sense of placing provision makes the act concrete: something is put into another household’s keeping.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: gift
מַתָּנָה
A gift is what has been given and placed into someone else’s hands, bringing the root’s action into a noun.
natun: given, placed
נָתוּן
This form describes what has been set or entrusted, echoing the provision placed in Hiram’s household.
שֶׁמֶן
shemen
GROWS FROM
שמן
sh-m-n
Be fat or become rich.
The word for oil belongs to the same root family as words for fatness and rich food. Alongside grain, the oil carries the sense of nourishment and richness in the household’s provision.
ALSO GROWS
shamen: fat, rich
שָׁמֵן
This branch makes the root’s connection between oil and richness audible.
mashmannim: rich foods
מַשְׁמַנִּים
The same root names rich food, as in Nehemiah’s call to eat and share portions, linking oil with nourishment meant for a table.
THE PATTERN
Ongoing bonds are sustained through material provision that reaches the people who carry them.
The Levite, for he has no portion nor inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates, shall come and eat and be filled, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands which you do.Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions to them for whom nothing stands ready, for this day is set apart to our Lord. Do not ache, for the joy of the LORD is your stronghold.But I hold everything in full, and I overflow; I am filled, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a fragrance of sweetness, a sacrifice welcomed, well pleasing to God.THE THREAD
But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to make strength, so that he may raise up his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.The same Hebrew root נָתַן (natan, give, set, place) appears in Solomon’s giving and in the giving of power to produce wealth. This opens the verse beneath the visible transfer: provision placed in one household rests on a prior capacity to produce and provide.
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