What Does 1 Chronicles 1:23 Mean in the King James?
And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab. All these were the sons of Joktan.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The line named for smallness still preserves each descendant individually.
THE MEANING
Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab appear as distinct names within one line of descent. Joktan’s name carries the sense of “small,” yet the line is not left anonymous. You are held in relation without being reduced to the line that holds you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Smallness makes a life or family line insignificant and forgettable; here, the descendants are still named.
THE ROOT
יָקְטָן
Yoqṭān
GROWS FROM
ק־ט־ן
q-ṭ-n
To be small, little, or young.
Joktan’s name is formed from the root for smallness. The verse then names three descendants of this “small” one, showing a line carefully kept in the record rather than erased by its scale.
ALSO GROWS
qāṭōn: Small or little.
קָטֹן
This adjective makes the smallness carried in Joktan’s name audible rather than leaving it as an opaque family label.
qəṭannōt: Small things.
קְטַנּוֹת
This form appears in the phrase “the day of small things”; it echoes the way a small beginning can still be seen and counted.
THE PATTERN
Smallness does not erase a name from the record or exclude it from what comes next.
And Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.THE THREAD
And Saul answered and said, Am not I a Benjamite, of the smallest of the tribes of Israel? and my family the least of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin? wherefore then speakest thou so to me?The root behind Joktan’s name is the same root Saul uses for “smallest” and “least.” The shared root lets this genealogy’s smallness be heard beside Saul’s family line: being described as small does not remove a name from the record.
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