What Does Genesis 4:19 Mean?
And Lamech took to himself two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.
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 Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.THE KEY
Adah carries the meaning “adornment,” and Zillah carries “shade,” so the two names hold a paired image: ornament beside shadow.
THE MEANING
You meet two distinct women in the same household, each named with an image: Adah, adornment; Zillah, shade. The verse’s simple count of two holds both names, and the meanings carried within them, together.
THE ROOT
עָדָה
ʿĀdāh
GROWS FROM
עדי
ʿ-d-y
To adorn or ornament.
Adah belongs to the Hebrew word-family of adornment. Her name carries an image into the verse: this is a name with a quality inside it, not only a label.
ALSO GROWS
ʿādâ: To adorn or put on an ornament.
עָדָה
This verb shares the name’s root-family and shows adornment as an action as well as an image.
ʿădî: An ornament or adornment.
עֲדִי
This noun makes the meaning carried by Adah’s name concrete: ornament.
צִלָּה
Ṣillāh
GROWS FROM
צלל
ṣ-l-l
To grow dark or cast shade.
Zillah’s name carries the image of shade, from the Hebrew word-family of shadow and darkening. Beside Adah’s adornment, her name adds shadow to the verse’s pair of images.
ALSO GROWS
ṣēl: Shadow or shade.
צֵל
This is the concrete shadow-image associated with Zillah’s name and links it to the verse’s naming.
ṣālal: To grow dark or become shadowed.
צָלַל
The verb shows that shade belongs to a Hebrew word-family of darkening, giving the name an image beyond its sound.
THE PATTERN
Scripture lets names carry defining nature or reality inside them.
And Adam called his wife's name, the living one, Eve; because she was the mother of all living.Let not my lord, I beg you, set his heart on this man of worthlessness, Nabal, the withering one. For as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and withering is with him. But I, your handmaid, did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.Look, the virgin will carry in her womb, and will bring forth a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, God with us.THE THREAD
He who settles in the hiding place of the Most High lodges in the shadow of the Almighty.Zillah’s name carries the Hebrew image of shade, and Psalm 91 uses that same shadow word-family for dwelling under the Almighty. The name in Genesis opens into an image of sheltering shade.
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