What Does 1 Kings 9:26 Mean?
And King Solomon made ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Sea of Reeds, in the land of Edom.
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 king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom.THE KEY
Hebrew calls the shore the sea’s “lip,” the same word as “language”: Solomon’s fleet is made where the land’s edge opens onto passage.
THE MEANING
Wholeness takes shape at a threshold: Solomon’s fleet is made where land touches open water. The shore is not only where land stops; it is where a vessel’s passage begins.
THE ROOT
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
sefat hayam
GROWS FROM
שפה
s-f-h
Lip or edge; the same word also means language.
Hebrew names the shore as the sea’s lip, using the same word for a human lip and for language. The fleet takes shape at an edge that is also named as a mouth.
ALSO GROWS
safah: Lip; language.
שָׂפָה
The same word names both the body’s edge and speech, revealing what the English word “shore” leaves hidden.
sefat hayam: Lip of the sea; shoreline.
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
This is the verse’s shoreline image: the sea has an edge like a lip, and the ships are made there.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete; to bring something to wholeness.
Solomon’s name carries the root of wholeness. Here that wholeness appears in a form made to move outward from the shore.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This root gives Solomon’s name its deeper resonance beneath the royal label.
shalem: Whole; complete.
שָׁלֵם
The name’s root carries completeness into a scene where ships are formed at the boundary of land and sea.
אֱדוֹם
Edom
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Red or reddish; the related word-family also echoes human and ground.
“Edom / Red sea” in this verse is Edom. The KJV calls the water the “Red sea,” while Hebrew names it יַם־סוּף (yam suph, Sea of Reeds); the nearby land-name אֱדוֹם (Edom, the red one) holds the color explicitly. Its consonants echo אָדָם (adam, human) and אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground, soil), layering human and earth into the place-name.
ALSO GROWS
adom: Red; reddish.
אָדֹם
This color-word is carried directly in the name Edom, beside the sea named for reeds.
adam: Human; person, the ground-being.
אָדָם
The shared consonants echo the human name in the land-name Edom.
adamah: Ground; soil.
אֲדָמָה
The same sound-family links the setting to the ground from which the human is named.
THE PATTERN
A shore is both the land’s limit and the place where vessels begin their passage across water.
And the children of Israel came into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them, on their right hand and on their left.Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their work in great waters.And stepping into a ship of Adramyttium, we put out, meaning to sail along the shores of Asia, and Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, was with us.THE THREAD
And the LORD delivered Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the lip of the sea.Exodus uses שְׂפַת הַיָּם (sefat hayam, lip of the sea), the same shoreline image as 1 Kings. That same edge holds Egypt’s dead after Israel’s passage through the water: the shared phrase lets the shoreline carry both departure and the visible cost of the waters closing.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us