What Does 1 Kings 7:12 Mean?
And the great court round about was with three rows of hewn stones, and a row of cedar beams, both for the inner court of the house of the LORD, and for the porch of the 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
And the great court round about was with three rows of hewed stones, and a row of cedar beams, both for the inner court of the house of the LORD, and for the porch of the house.THE KEY
The house is framed by two kinds of cutting: hewn stone and cut cedar shape an ordered space from the great court to the inner court and porch.
THE MEANING
A sacred dwelling takes shape through deliberate boundaries. Hewn stone and cut cedar form the great court around the house, and the same pattern marks the inner court and porch. The outer and inner spaces belong to one ordered house.
THE ROOT
גָּזִית
gazith
GROWS FROM
גזז
To shear, cut away, or hew.
“hewn stones” in this verse is gazith. The word carries the sense of stone made ready by cutting; the same root describes shearing away a fleece. Here, the stone boundary is a shaped surface, arranged in repeated courses around the court.
ALSO GROWS
gazaz: To shear or cut off.
גָּזַז
This is the root verb behind the hewn stone: cutting gives the stone its worked form.
gez: A fleece that has been shorn.
גֵּז
The same root’s cutting sense appears in wool as well as stone, showing how the word links different materials through the act of cutting.
כְּרֻתוֹת
kerutot
GROWS FROM
כרת
To cut, cut down, or cut off.
The cedar beams are named as cut timbers, from a root also used in the phrase “cut a covenant.” That shared root links the shaped wood in this house with a word-picture for establishing a bond.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut, cut down, or cut off.
כָּרַת
The timber’s name carries the root’s direct sense of wood cut from what was growing.
karat berit: To make a covenant, literally “cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת בְּרִית
This phrase shows the same root extending from cutting material to language for establishing a bond.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling set apart for God takes shape through ordered spaces and distinct materials.
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.For a tent is built, the first one, in which are the lampstand, the table, and the loaves laid out, which is called the set-apart place.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The cedar timbers use כְּרֻתוֹת (kerutot, cut timbers), from כרת (karat, cut). Genesis 15:18 uses that root in כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit, “cut a covenant”), linking the cut that shapes the timber with the language of a bond established.
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