What Does 1 Kings 5:15 Mean?
And Solomon had seventy thousand who lifted burdens, and eighty thousand cutters in the mountain.
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 had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains;THE KEY
Before the house rises, the verse counts the bodies already carrying its weight.
THE MEANING
The verse puts a human count in front of every monument: seventy thousand carry loads and eighty thousand cut stone. A public work rests on bodies doing different kinds of labor, even when attention falls on the finished structure. The workers’ names are absent, but their numbers are not.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a ruler alone makes the work that bears his name. The verse counts the people who carry and cut its materials.
THE ROOT
נֹשֵׂא
nōśēʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
To lift, carry, or bear; to take something up.
“lifted” in this verse is nōśēʾ. The same root forms נָשִׂיא (nāśīʾ, leader or prince; literally, one raised up). A kingdom’s raised-up figure and the workers lifting its loads belong to one word-family: elevation and carrying meet in the same root.
ALSO GROWS
maśśāʾ: A load or burden.
מַשָּׂא
This branch names what is taken up, bringing the workers’ physical load into view.
nāśīʾ: A leader or prince; one raised up.
נָשִׂיא
The root links the elevated position of a ruler with the act of lifting loads in the same verse.
חֹצֵב
ḥōṣēv
GROWS FROM
חצב
ḥatsav
To hew or cut material out of stone or rock.
“cutters” in this verse is ḥōṣēv. The word names active cutting from the mountain, before stone becomes part of a house. Isaiah uses the same root for people “hewn” from a rock, linking quarrying material with being drawn from a source.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṣav: To hew or quarry.
חָצַב
The base verb makes clear that the workers are extracting stone from the mountain itself.
ḥuṣṣavtem: You were hewn, as in Isaiah 51:1.
חֻצַבְתֶּם
The same root can describe people as hewn from a source, extending the mountain’s cut stone into an image of origin.
סָבָל
sābāl
GROWS FROM
סבל
sabal
To carry a load or bear a burden.
“burdens” in this verse is sābāl. The verse places two roots side by side: נֹשֵׂא (nōśēʾ, one who lifts or carries) names the action, while סָבָל (sābāl, burden) names the load. The count holds both the work and the weight together.
ALSO GROWS
sabbāl: A porter or load-bearer.
סַבָּל
The same word-family names a person by the burden-bearing work they do.
sivlōt: Burdens or imposed loads, as in Exodus 1:11.
סִבְלֹת
This branch shows the word used for labor loads placed on people, giving the verse’s count a concrete human dimension.
THE PATTERN
The visible order of a kingdom or empire is carried into view through labor assigned to ordinary bodies.
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, heavy stones, and hewn stones, to lay the foundation of the house.And as they led him away, they took hold of a man named Simon, a Cyrenian, coming from the field, and they laid the cross on him, that he might carry it behind Jesus.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The Hebrew verb translated “borne” is נָשָׂא (nāsāʾ, lift, carry, bear), the same root heard in this verse’s נֹשֵׂא (nōśēʾ, one who carries). The shared root brings the physical load of labor here alongside the griefs carried there.
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