What Does 2 Chronicles 35:9 Mean?
Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethaneel, his brothers, and Hashabiah, and Jeiel, and Jozabad, princes of the Levites, gave to the Levites for the Passover five thousand from the flock, and five hundred from the herd.
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
Conaniah also, and Shemaiah and Nethaneel, his brethren, and Hashabiah and Jeiel and Jozabad, chief of the Levites, gave unto the Levites for passover offerings five thousand small cattle, and five hundred oxen.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb behind “gave” pictures the leaders setting the Passover provision in place for the people who serve it.
THE MEANING
Shared remembrance has material weight: provision must be set where the people serving a gathering can use it. Here, generosity becomes concrete coordination, with thousands of animals placed in the Levites’ care for the Passover.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that communal remembrance rests on intention alone; the gathering is sustained by tangible provision.
THE ROOT
הֶעֱמִידוּ
he’emidu
GROWS FROM
עמד
To stand; in this form, to cause to stand, establish, or set in place.
The Hebrew verb pictures the leaders making the offerings stand ready for the Levites. English “gave” conveys the transfer, while the root also reveals provision established where the work can draw on it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmad: To stand, remain, or take one’s stand.
עָמַד
The shared root links what is set in place here with the standing service that the provision supports.
ʿammūd: A pillar or column; something that stands.
עַמּוּד
This branch makes the root’s image tangible: the offerings stand behind the Levites’ Passover work as its material support.
THE PATTERN
Shared resources are placed where they can sustain a community’s common work and remembrance.
The children of Israel brought a willing offering unto the LORD, every man and woman whose heart made them free-hearted to bring for all manner of work, which the LORD had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses.But who am I, and what is my people, that we should hold the strength to offer so willingly after this sort? For all things come from you, and from your hand have we given to you.and set them down at the feet of the sent ones, and it was given out to each as anyone had need.THE THREAD
My sons, do not now wander off, for the LORD has chosen you to stand before his face, to attend him, and to be his attendants, and to make the smoke of incense rise.The verb translated “gave” here comes from עמד (ʿāmad), “to stand”; in this form it means to set something in place. In 2 Chronicles 29:11, the Levites are chosen to “stand before” the LORD, linking the provision established for Passover with the service it sustains.
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