What Does 2 Chronicles 1:10 Mean?
Give me now wisdom and knowing, that I may go out and come in before this people, for who can judge this great people of yours?
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
Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?THE KEY
The people called “great” are literally weighty, so the verse measures leadership by the responsibility carried, not by the authority held.
THE MEANING
You meet responsibility among people whose lives carry weight, and authority by itself does not make you able to judge well. Wisdom and knowledge are capacities you can receive before you move among those entrusted to your care. The verse treats the people’s greatness as a weight to be borne with discernment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that being given authority means you already possess the discernment to use it; here, responsibility gives you reason to ask for wisdom and knowledge.
THE ROOT
הַכָּבֵד
ha-kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, weighty in importance.
The people described as “great” are called weighty. That word makes the request for wisdom feel proportionate to the responsibility of judging them: their lives are not a light charge.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty
כָּבֵד
It makes the people’s greatness tangible as something that carries consequence.
kavod: Weight, honor, glory
כָּבוֹד
The shared root links what is weighty with what carries honor, giving the people’s importance a sense of substance.
חָכְמָה
ḥokhmah
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or skillful.
The root holds practical skill together with wisdom. Set beside knowledge, it describes discernment that can meet real situations, not merely a title or an idea.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākham: To be wise or skillful
חָכַם
It shows wisdom as a way of acting capably among the people.
ḥākām: Wise, skillful
חָכָם
The wise person embodies the quality being requested: skill for the work of judgment.
מַדָּע
maddaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive; knowing that can arise through experience.
The word for knowledge grows from the same root as knowing and perceiving. The request reaches beyond stored information toward the kind of knowing that recognizes what is happening among the people.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: To know, recognize, perceive
יָדַע
It connects knowledge with attentive recognition, a capacity needed to judge people well.
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This related form shows the shared root beneath knowing and the knowledge being requested.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom for serving others is received from God in proportion to the weight of the responsibility.
For the LORD gives wisdom; out of his mouth come knowledge and discernment.But if any of you is left behind in wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all without doubling and without taunting, and it will be given him.Moreover, you shall look out from all the people for men of strength, who stand in awe of God, men of truth, who hate plunder; and set such over them as rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.THE THREAD
So give your servant a heart that hears and responds, to judge your people, so that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this heavy people of yours?Both verses use שָׁפַט (shaphat, judge), so the request concerns the capacity to govern justly. The parallel asks for an understanding heart that discerns between good and bad, revealing the kind of wisdom and knowledge the current verse names.
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