What Does 1 Chronicles 23:22 Mean in the King James?
And Eleazar died, and had no sons, but daughters: and their brethren the sons of Kish took them.
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 verb for “took” also means “to carry,” and here it describes marriage: the daughters remain within the kinship that carries on.
THE MEANING
A family’s continuity is not measured by sons alone: daughters remain within the kinship web, and marriage can carry that connection forward. The verse holds death and continuity together: Eleazar has no sons, yet his daughters are joined to his male kin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the assumption that a family’s future ends when there are no sons; the daughters remain part of the family’s continuing bonds.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשָּׂאוּם
vayissa'um
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
to lift, carry, or bear
“took” in this verse is vayissa'um. The same Hebrew verb can mean carrying or bearing, and it is also used for taking a wife. That overlap gives this marriage a sense of kinship carried forward through the daughters.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift or carry something, or to bear a load.
נָשָׂא
This is the root’s concrete sense beneath the verse’s marriage verb.
massa: A burden or something carried.
מַשָּׂא
It shares the root’s sense of bearing, making the carrying image visible in another Hebrew word.
nasi: A chief or leader; literally associated with one raised up.
נָשִׂיא
It shows the root’s other direction: what is carried or lifted can also be raised to prominence.
THE PATTERN
When a household has no sons, daughters and their kinship can still carry its bonds and name forward.
The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren; and thou shalt cause the inheritance of their father to pass unto them.Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;THE THREAD
And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.Genesis uses the same נשא (nasa), “carry, bear,” verb for taking wives. That shared root opens the marriage here as a carrying of kinship through the daughters.
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