What Does 1 Kings 6:1 Mean?
And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel went out from the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.
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 it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.THE KEY
The house of the LORD begins with a people who have come out; its timeline still counts from their departure.
THE MEANING
A place for God’s presence takes shape inside a long movement out of constriction: the house’s beginning is measured from the people’s coming out. Your leaving and your capacity to make room for wholeness belong to one unfolding story.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that leaving a constricted place no longer matters once building begins: the house’s beginning is still measured from that departure.
THE ROOT
וַיִּבֶן
wayyiven
GROWS FROM
בנה
bānāh
Build, build up.
The verb וַיִּבֶן (wayyiven, “he built”) comes from בנה (bānāh, “build”), a root that can also speak of being built up through children. In Genesis 16:2, the KJV’s “obtain children” renders a phrase using this same root, joining the making of a dwelling with the making of a lineage.
ALSO GROWS
bānāh: To build or build up.
בָּנָה
This is the root verb itself, naming the action that brings the house into being.
mivneh: Structure or form.
מִבְנֶה
This derivative names what the act of building gives shape to.
bēn: Son or child.
בֵּן
It shares the ב־נ consonantal family; the connection with בנה becomes vivid in Genesis 16:2, where gaining children is expressed as being built up.
לְצֵאת
letset
GROWS FROM
יצא
yāṣāʾ
Go out, emerge, come forth.
“went out” in this verse is letset. The verse dates the house from the people’s לְצֵאת (letset, “going out”). Their emergence is not a detail left behind: it remains the measure from which the building’s moment is known.
ALSO GROWS
yāṣāʾ: Go out or come forth.
יָצָא
This is the root verb behind the people’s departure from Egypt.
yetsi’ah: Going out or departure.
יְצִיאָה
This noun preserves the movement named in the verse as the starting point of the timeline.
motsa: Exit, outlet, or source.
מוֹצָא
It names a way out, echoing the departure that remains beneath the house’s chronology.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling for divine presence takes shape downstream of emergence, making departure part of its foundation.
And it came to be at the end of four hundred and thirty years, and on this very bone of the day it came to be, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.Have you not seen that you are God's temple, and that the breath of God dwells in you?THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Genesis uses the root בנה (bānāh, “build”) in אִבָּנֶה (’ibbāneh, “I may be built”) where the KJV says “obtain children.” The same root can name the making of a dwelling and the building up of a lineage.
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