What Does 1 Chronicles 12:2 Mean in the King James?
They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow, even of Saul’s brethren of Benjamin.
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 Hebrew word for bow also means rainbow, so the weapon in these hands and the covenant sign in the sky share one name.
THE MEANING
The fighters send stones and shoot arrows from either hand. The name Benjamin echoes yamin, right hand, even as their skill spans right and left. Read now, readiness reaches across the whole body’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that capacity belongs only to the more natural side: here, both hands carry the same forceful work.
THE ROOT
קֶשֶׁת
qeshet
GROWS FROM
קשת
q-sh-t
Bow; the same Hebrew noun also means rainbow.
Hebrew uses qeshet for both a weapon and a rainbow. English uses separate words, hiding that the bow in these fighters’ hands and the arc in the clouds share one name.
ALSO GROWS
Bow: A bow used to shoot arrows.
This is the weapon named in the verse.
Rainbow: The bow-shaped arc in the clouds.
The same Hebrew noun names the sign set in the cloud in Genesis 9:13.
יָמִין
yamin
GROWS FROM
ימן
y-m-n
Right side or hand; also the south, as the direction on one’s right when facing east.
The verse’s right-hand wording echoes yamin in the name Benjamin, Binyamin, meaning son of the right hand. Their name carries one side while their skill spans both.
ALSO GROWS
Right hand: The right hand or right side.
This is the side named in the verse’s description of their skill.
Benjamin: Son of the right hand.
The tribal name at the verse’s close contains yamin.
South: The direction on one’s right when facing east.
The same word carries right-hand orientation into geography.
THE PATTERN
A body’s capacity grows as its parts are trained and able to contribute their measure.
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss.A Psalm of David. Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight:From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.THE THREAD
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.Genesis names the bow set in the cloud with the same Hebrew word, qeshet. One word holds a weapon in the hand and a covenant sign spanning the sky.
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