What Does 1 Kings 7:49 Mean?
And the lampstands of pure gold, five on the right hand, and five on the left, before the innermost room, with the blossoms, and the lamps, and the tongs of 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
And the candlesticks of pure gold, five on the right side, and five on the left, before the oracle, with the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs of gold,THE KEY
The sanctuary’s light is shaped alongside blossom: flowering and flame share the same golden setting.
THE MEANING
This verse places blossoms, lamps, and the tools that tend them before the innermost place. Its image holds illumination and flowering together, presenting sacred order as something alive with growth.
THE ROOT
פֶּרַח
perach
GROWS FROM
פרח
To blossom, sprout, or break forth in growth.
“blossoms” in this verse is perach. The word translated “flowers” comes from the same root as the verb “to blossom.” The golden ornament carries the sense of growth coming into visible form, not merely a decorative shape.
ALSO GROWS
lifroaḥ: To blossom or sprout.
לִפְרֹחַ
This verb is the action contained in the flower’s name: growth breaking into view.
yipraḥ: He shall flourish or blossom.
יִפְרַח
This form appears in Psalm 92:12, joining the sanctuary’s flower to the flourishing of the righteous.
THE PATTERN
Scripture joins illumination with living forms of growth.
Three cups shaped like almonds on one stalk, with a knob and a blossom; and three cups shaped like almonds on the other stalk, with a knob and a blossom; so for the six stalks that come forth from the lampstand.The aligned one blooms like the palm tree; he grows tall like the cedar in Lebanon.In him was life, and the life was the light of humankind.THE THREAD
The aligned one blooms like the palm tree; he grows tall like the cedar in Lebanon.The same Hebrew root that names the gold flower here names the flourishing in this psalm. Flowering is not only a shape on the lampstand; it is also the language of life coming into visible growth.
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