What Does 1 Kings 7:1 Mean?
But Solomon was building his own house for thirteen years, and he finished all his house.
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
But Solomon was building his own house thirteen years, and he finished all his house.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “building” also gives the word for “son,” joining a house’s structure to the household formed within it.
THE MEANING
A dwelling takes shape through work that lasts, and its completion holds the time spent making it. Here, the word for building reaches beyond walls toward a household being formed.
THE ROOT
בָּנָה
banah
GROWS FROM
בנה
Build, establish, or form a dwelling.
“building” in this verse is banah. The root connects making a structure with forming a household. A house can be understood as more than walls: it is also the people and generations gathered within it.
ALSO GROWS
ben: Son, child.
בֵּן
The word is linked to the root for building; Genesis 16:2 uses that root for being built up through children.
binyan: Building, structure.
בִּנְיָן
This noun keeps the root’s concrete sense of constructing a dwelling visible alongside its household sense.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
Be whole, complete, or sound.
Solomon’s name carries the same root family as words for wholeness, heard beside the verse’s statement that he finished the house. The name and the completion echo one another without making the house itself the source of wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being, peace.
שָׁלוֹם
This branch lets the name’s language of wholeness sound alongside the house reaching completion.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch shares the root carried in Solomon’s name and echoes the verse’s language of finishing.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents a house as something formed through labor, with its completion and endurance tied to its source.
And in the eleventh year, in the month Bul, which is the eighth month, the house was finished in all its parts, and according to all its ordinance. And he was seven years building it.A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.For we are fellow workers with God. You are God's field; you are God's building.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.The Hebrew phrase behind “obtain children” uses בנה (banah, “build”), casting Sarai’s words as “I may be built through her.” That root opens house-building here from completed architecture toward a household taking shape.
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