What Does 2 Chronicles 4:10 Mean?
And he set the sea on the right side of the east end, facing the south.
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 he set the sea on the right side of the east end, over against the south.THE KEY
The Sea’s placement uses a body-facing compass: with east ahead, its right side is south.
THE MEANING
The verse makes the Sea’s location readable from a person facing sunrise: east is ahead, and south lies to the right. What sounds like a list of directions forms one coherent orientation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The directions are not unrelated coordinates; they align around a person oriented toward the east.
THE ROOT
קֵדְמָה
qedmah
GROWS FROM
קדם
What is in front or comes before; in spatial use, the east, where the sun rises.
“eastward” in this verse is qedmah. The word for east also carries the sense of what is ahead or in front. That makes east the passage’s forward axis: once you face it, the right side falls south.
ALSO GROWS
qedem: East; front; former time or antiquity
קֶדֶם
It links the direction east with what lies ahead and with what came before, giving the placement more than a map coordinate.
qadim: East wind
קָדִים
The directional word extends into the wind that comes from the east, showing how the root names an orientation in the world.
qadam: Come before; precede; meet
קָדַם
This verb preserves the root’s sense of coming in front or ahead, the same spatial idea carried by eastward.
הַיְמָנִית
hayemanit
GROWS FROM
ימן
The right side or right hand; in directional usage, the side to the south when facing east.
The right side is not an arbitrary position here: east is the forward direction, so right corresponds to south. The verse’s “right side” and “south” resolve into one viewpoint.
ALSO GROWS
yamin: Right hand; right side; sometimes the south
יָמִין
This noun can name both the right side and the southern direction, joining the verse’s body-based and geographic coordinates.
yeminah: Toward the right; rightward
יָמִינָה
This directional form shows the root describing movement or orientation toward the right-hand side.
THE PATTERN
Biblical spaces become legible through orientation, with east serving as a defining axis.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he set Adam, whom he had shaped.And the width of the enclosure, on the front edge, eastward, shall be fifty forearms.From the rising, three gates, and from the north, three gates, and from the south, three gates, and from the setting, three gates.THE THREAD
Afterward he brought me back to the opening of the house, and look, waters went out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the face of the house faced east. And the waters came down from under the right side of the house, from the south of the altar.Ezekiel repeats the same eastward and right-side language, then names the south side of the altar. The shared roots make the temple’s facing direction part of how its placement is read.
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