What Does 1 Kings 6:21 Mean?
So Solomon overlaid the house within with clean gold; and he stretched gold chains across before the innermost room, and overlaid it with gold.
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
So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: and he made a partition by the chains of gold before the oracle; and he overlaid it with gold.THE KEY
The gold marks the threshold before the innermost place as part of its preciousness: a boundary can guard value without denying it.
THE MEANING
Your inward life has a center whose value does not depend on being fully exposed. This verse holds preciousness and boundary together: the place within is covered in gold, and a marked threshold stands before it.
THE ROOT
וַיַּעֲבֵר
wayyaʿăvēr
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿ-b-r
To pass over or cross; in this verb form, to cause to pass.
“stretched gold chains across” in this verse is wayyaʿăvēr. The verb rendered “made a partition” comes from עבר, whose basic motion is passing across. That keeps a crossing quality audible in the threshold: the chains mark a line before the inner chamber and distinguish what lies beyond it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāvar: To pass over or cross.
עָבַר
This is the root verb behind the form translated “made a partition,” bringing the sense of crossing into the boundary before the oracle.
maʿāvar: A crossing or passage.
מַעֲבָר
This noun from the same root shows how עבר can name the passage across a boundary, illuminating the threshold formed by the chains.
ʿēver: The other side; beyond.
עֵבֶר
The root can name what lies across the line, echoing the inner place set apart beyond the partition.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks the innermost holy place with a boundary that distinguishes it, and also depicts that boundary opening.
And you shall hang up the veil under the taches, so that you may bring in there, within the veil, the ark of the testimony; and the veil shall divide for you between the set-apart place and the most set-apart place.And after the second curtain, the tent that is called the most set-apart of all.And look, the hanging curtain of the temple was torn in two, from above to below, and the earth shook, and the rocks broke open.THE THREAD
And Abram crossed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land.The verb rendered “made a partition” comes from עבר, the same root translated “passed through” here. One root holds both crossing a land and marking the line before an inner chamber.
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