What Does 2 Chronicles 29:33 Mean?
And the set-apart things were six hundred cattle and three thousand sheep.
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 consecrated things were six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep.THE KEY
The verse calls the animals themselves “the set-apart ones,” making sacredness visible in what is given over.
THE MEANING
Set-apartness has material form here: the oxen and sheep are named as assigned to sacred use, not left as an abstract intention. The count makes its scale visible, six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that setting something apart is only an inward intention; here it has countable, material form.
THE ROOT
הַקֳּדָשִׁים
ha-qodashim
GROWS FROM
ק־ד־שׁ
q-d-sh
Set apart; be or make sacred.
“consecrated things” in this verse is ha-qodashim. Qodashim means “set-apart things,” from the root q-d-sh. The root keeps consecration connected to a tangible distinction: these animals are set apart for sacred use.
ALSO GROWS
qadash: Be set apart; consecrate.
קָדַשׁ
The verb names the act behind the animals being called consecrated.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The sanctuary shares the same root, linking what is set apart with the place devoted to sacred use.
THE PATTERN
What is set apart becomes visible in what is assigned to sacred use.
Set apart to me every firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, of humankind and of beast; it is mine.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.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
Set apart to me every firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, of humankind and of beast; it is mine.“Sanctify” comes from the same q-d-sh root as “consecrated things” in this verse. Exodus names what is set apart as belonging to the LORD; Chronicles shows that setting-apart in a counted offering.
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