What Does 2 Chronicles 1:12 Mean?
Wisdom and knowing is given to you; and I will give you riches, and possessions, and weight, such as none of the kings have had who were before you, nor shall any after you have the like.
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
Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.THE KEY
Hebrew uses one root for “granted” and “give,” placing wisdom and knowledge beside wealth and honor as gifts from the same hand.
THE MEANING
Wisdom and knowledge are received gifts, and riches, wealth, and honor are named as gifts too. The verse places discernment before visible abundance and holds both under one giver. Possession does not become the measure of wisdom.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse names wisdom and knowledge as granted, undoing the belief that discernment is self-made.
THE ROOT
נָתוּן
nātūn
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
“given” in this verse is nātūn. The Hebrew word rendered “granted” and the later “I will give” both grow from נתן (n-t-n). English gives them different sounds, but the verse uses the same seed for wisdom and knowledge and for riches, wealth, and honor: each is received.
ALSO GROWS
nātan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the root verb beneath both “granted” and “give,” joining the two parts of the verse.
mattānāh: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root makes explicit the shared idea beneath the verse’s different forms of giving.
מַדָּע
maddaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or perceive; knowing by encounter, not information alone.
The Hebrew for “knowledge,” מַדָּע (maddaʿ), is connected to ידע (yadaʿ), “know” or “perceive.” Beside wisdom, it points to discernment that involves knowing, not merely collecting facts.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
This root verb reveals the kind of knowing carried beneath “knowledge.”
daʿat: Knowing or knowledge.
דַּעַת
This familiar form from the same root shows knowledge as an active kind of knowing.
חָכְמָה
ḥokhmāh
GROWS FROM
חכם
To be wise or skillful.
Wisdom, חָכְמָה (ḥokhmāh), shares its root with words for a wise person and for being wise. The word carries more than clever thought: it also holds the sense of skillful discernment.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākām: A wise or skilled person.
חָכָם
This branch shows wisdom as a quality embodied in a person.
ḥākam: To be wise or act skillfully.
חָכַם
This verbal branch connects wisdom with practiced discernment.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom and understanding are presented as gifts received for life and action, not status accumulated.
And I have filled him with the breath of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of work.And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.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.THE THREAD
It is emptiness for you to rise up early and sit up late, to eat the bread of pains; for so he gives his beloved sleep.The Hebrew verb translated “giveth” here shares the נתן (n-t-n) root behind “granted” and “give” in this verse. Psalm 127 names sleep as a gift amid anxious labor; together, the verses show the same giving root holding very different forms of provision.
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