What Does 2 Chronicles 5:11 Mean?
And it came to be, when the priests came out of the set-apart place, for all the priests who were found there had set themselves apart, and the divisions did not then keep their turns.
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 it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place: (for all the priests that were present were sanctified, and did not then wait by course:THE KEY
“The holy place” and the “sanctified” priests share one Hebrew root: the set-apart place is mirrored in the set-apart people who leave it.
THE MEANING
A sacred threshold and a set-apart people belong to one movement: the priests come out of the holy place already sanctified. Their service does not wait on the ordinary rotation, because all who are present are prepared together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Sacredness belongs only to a location, while the people who serve there remain ordinary.
THE ROOT
הִתְקַדָּשׁוּ
hitqaddeshu
GROWS FROM
קדש
q-d-sh
Set apart; make sacred.
“set-apart place” in this verse is hitqaddeshu. The phrase for “holy place” earlier in this same verse comes from the same consonants. English gives “holy” to the place and “sanctified” to the people, while Hebrew lets one seed bind them: set-apart space and set-apart people belong together.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: Holiness; a sacred or set-apart place.
קֹדֶשׁ
This is the word translated “holy place” in the verse, directly linking the priests’ setting-apart to the space they leave.
qadosh: Holy; set apart.
קָדוֹשׁ
This branch names the quality shared by sacred space and people set apart for service.
THE PATTERN
The sacred is disclosed when set-apart people and set-apart space are held together.
I will set apart the tent of meeting, and the altar. I will set apart also both Aaron and his sons, to serve me as priest.And he said to them, Hear and respond to me, Levites. Set yourselves apart now, and set apart the house of the LORD, the God of your fathers, and carry out the filthiness from the set-apart place.If anyone ruins the temple of God, God will ruin him, for God's temple is set apart, and you are that temple.THE THREAD
I will set apart the tent of meeting, and the altar. I will set apart also both Aaron and his sons, to serve me as priest.The same Hebrew root joins the tabernacle and altar to Aaron and his sons: the place is set apart, and so are the people who serve there. That is the union compressed into this verse’s “holy place” and “sanctified.”
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