What Does 2 Samuel 5:9 Mean?
So David settled in the stronghold and called it the city of David. And David built all around from Millo and inward.
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 David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward.THE KEY
Millo is commonly linked to the Hebrew root for “fill,” so the city of the beloved is built from a place of filling and inward.
THE MEANING
Your dwelling and your building meet: you inhabit a place even as its shape takes form around you. The city bears David’s name, and its construction moves from Millo, the filling, toward the inner space, joining presence and structure.
THE ROOT
מִלּוֹא
Millo
GROWS FROM
מלא
To fill; to be full.
Millo is commonly connected with מלא, the Hebrew root for filling. That connection makes the phrase “from Millo and inward” resonate as more than a place name: the building begins at what is filled and moves toward the inner space.
ALSO GROWS
male: To fill; to be full.
מָלֵא
This verb gives Millo its association with filling, so the place name echoes the work of making a space full.
mille: Filled; completed.
מִלֵּא
The related form links filling with completion, giving the city’s construction a sense of an interior being made whole.
וַיִּבֶן
wayyiven
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build; to establish.
The Hebrew verb for “built” belongs to a root also associated with the son and the continuity of a household. English presents the city’s construction as masonry; the root can also carry the sense of forming something that continues a family.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: Building; structure.
בִּנְיָן
This noun makes the shared root between the act of building and the resulting structure explicit.
ben: Son.
בֵּן
Traditionally connected with בנה, “son” carries the image of one who continues or builds a household.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; dear one.
David’s name is associated with דּוֹד, “beloved.” The city named for him carries more than a ruler’s label: it bears a relational name, joining habitation with belonging.
ALSO GROWS
dod: Beloved; dear one.
דּוֹד
This is the name’s familiar root connection, so “the city of David” carries the sense of a city bearing the beloved one’s nature.
dodim: Love; expressions of affection.
דּוֹדִים
The plural form extends the root’s relational sense, giving the city’s name an echo of affection and belonging.
THE PATTERN
An inhabited life takes form as building gathers into a structure that can hold it.
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from Adam, he built into a woman, and brought her to Adam.So we built the wall, and all the wall was tied together to half of it, for the people had heart to work.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
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.The Hebrew root בנה (banah, “build”) recurs in the line “Except the LORD build the house.” Psalm 127:1 places building beside keeping a city, opening David’s dwelling and construction as one question of what makes a place hold.
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