What Does 1 Chronicles 16:19 Mean in the King James?
When ye were but few, even a few, and strangers in it.
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 verse holds two kinds of exposure together: they are few enough to count, and their dwelling is still that of strangers.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you where your numbers are few and your place still feels like a stranger’s. It names smallness and unsettled dwelling plainly, without turning either into a verdict on the reach of your belonging.
THE ROOT
מְתֵי מִסְפָּר
metei mispar
GROWS FROM
ספר
Count, number, recount.
“few” in this verse is metei mispar. The Hebrew phrase is literally “men of number,” making fewness something counted and measured. The same root also carries the sense of recounting, so what can be counted can also be told or recorded.
ALSO GROWS
saphar: to count or recount
סָפַר
The verb makes the verse’s “few” concrete: the group can be numbered.
sefer: book or written record
סֵפֶר
This related word carries counting into recording, suggesting that being few does not make a presence unrecordable.
גָּרִים
gerim
GROWS FROM
גור
To sojourn or dwell as a guest or outsider.
This root holds both residence and outsider status: the strangers are present in the land, yet their dwelling remains unsettled. English “strangers” can sound like a label for people; the root also points to the act of living somewhere as a sojourner.
ALSO GROWS
ger: stranger or resident alien
גֵּר
This noun names the person who lives in a place without being settled there as a native.
megurekha: your sojournings
מְגוּרֶיךָ
The related form in Genesis 17:8 calls the land the place of one’s sojourning, keeping temporary dwelling inside the root itself.
THE PATTERN
Being few or living as a stranger does not by itself decide the reach of belonging.
The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:And out of them shall proceed thanksgiving and the voice of them that make merry: and I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them, and they shall not be small.These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.THE THREAD
And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.The same gur root (גור) appears in the phrase “wherein thou art a stranger.” The verse holds sojourning and promised possession together: an unsettled stay can still stand within a larger claim of belonging.
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