What Does 1 Chronicles 24:6 Mean in the King James?
And Shemaiah the son of Nethaneel the scribe, one of the Levites, wrote them before the king, and the princes, and Zadok the priest, and Ahimelech the son of Abiathar, and before the chief of the fathers of the priests and Levites: one principal household being taken for Eleazar, and one taken for Ithamar.
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
Shemaiah (שְׁמַעְיָה, Shema‘yah, “YHWH has heard”) records the count before the whole circle of authority, making the distribution visible and accountable.
THE MEANING
An order becomes trustworthy when everyone who shares responsibility can see how it is arranged. Each household has a named place in a sequence held before the king, leaders, and priestly heads.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that order depends on one unseen decision-maker: the arrangement stands in the open among all who bear authority.
THE ROOT
הַסֹּפֵר
ha-sopher
GROWS FROM
ס־פ־ר
s-p-r
To count or recount; by extension, to tell or record.
The word for scribe grows from the same root that counts and tells. The one recording the order is also the counter who makes the allocation legible to every witness.
ALSO GROWS
saphar: Count, recount, tell.
סָפַר
The record here carries a count: households are entered into an ordered arrangement.
sefer: Book or scroll.
סֵפֶר
A written record preserves an order so it can be seen beyond the moment of selection.
mispar: Number or count.
מִסְפָּר
The same root joins written record with the act of numbering.
שְׁמַעְיָה
Shema‘yah
GROWS FROM
ש־מ־ע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or heed; the name means “YHWH has heard.”
“Shemaiah” in this verse is Shema‘yah. The recorder’s name carries hearing within it. The order is written before human authorities while the name itself places the act of hearing in the frame.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen, heed.
שָׁמַע
The name links the public record with hearing: the allocation is set before those who must witness it.
shemuʿah: Report or news that is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report makes what happened known; the written count makes this distribution knowable to the whole circle.
נְתַנְאֵל
Nethanʾel
GROWS FROM
נ־ת־ן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place; the name means “God has given.”
The scribe is named as the son of Nethaneel, “God has given.” The root’s sense of giving and setting echoes the placement of each household in the shared order.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
Each household is set into a particular place in the arrangement.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This branch carries the root’s sense of something given, echoing the placing of a household within the distribution.
THE PATTERN
Shared responsibility becomes visible when names and counts are gathered into an order that witnesses can see.
And they assembled all the congregation together on the first day of the second month, and they declared their pedigrees after their families, by the house of their fathers, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and upward, by their polls.And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:THE THREAD
Now the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty years and upward: and their number by their polls, man by man, was thirty and eight thousand.“Numbered” here comes from the same root as the word for “scribe” in 1 Chronicles 24:6. Counting and recording belong to one root, so the list is also an act of making the community’s order visible.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us