What Does 2 Chronicles 5:14 Mean?
And the priests could not stand to attend before the cloud, for the weight of the LORD had filled the house of God.
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
So that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the LORD had filled the house of God.THE KEY
The LORD’s glory is weight: when it fills the house, even the priests’ ability to stand and serve gives way.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with a presence that fills the space so completely that even the priests cannot continue their service. The LORD’s glory is not merely a title here; it bears weight, and their bodies register it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the holy can always be managed as part of ordinary service: here, the priests cannot keep ministering when the house is filled.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
English “glory” can sound abstract, but kavod carries the sense of weight. The priests’ inability to stand makes that weight bodily: the presence filling the house interrupts what they can do.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the physical sense of kavod audible beneath “glory.”
kibbed: To honor, to treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor and weight share a root: what is honored is given weight.
THE PATTERN
When divine weight fills sacred space, human capacity to stand or enter gives way.
And Moses could not come into the tent of meeting, for the cloud settled upon it, and the weight of the LORD filled the dwelling.So that the priests could not stand to serve because of the cloud, for the weight of the LORD had filled the house of the LORD.And the temple is filled with smoke from the weight of God and from his strength; and no one is able to enter into the temple until the seven blows of the seven messengers reach their end.THE THREAD
And Moses could not come into the tent of meeting, for the cloud settled upon it, and the weight of the LORD filled the dwelling.The same word kavod, “glory” (כָּבוֹד), appears as the LORD’s glory fills the tabernacle. Moses cannot enter there, just as the priests cannot stand here: the weight of the presence exceeds the body’s capacity to proceed.
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