What Does 1 Chronicles 4:23 Mean in the King James?
These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work.
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 king’s work takes shape as a place people make, grow, and inhabit.
THE MEANING
You see the king’s work carried by people whose craft and dwelling are woven into a place: potters shape, while others live among plants and hedges. The work is not only a task performed for the king; it is also a life lived within what that work forms.
THE ROOT
הַיּוֹצְרִים
hayyotserim
GROWS FROM
יצר
to form, shape, or fashion
“potters” in this verse is hayyotserim. “Potter” names a craft, while its Hebrew root also means to form or shape. The verse places this act of giving form within the king’s work, among people who dwell in the very place the work serves.
ALSO GROWS
yatsar: to form or fashion
יָצַר
It shows the shaping action inside the word for potter.
yetser: formation, design, or intention
יֵצֶר
The same root can name a formed design, widening the image from a trade to the act of shaping.
נְטָעִים
neta'im
GROWS FROM
נטע
to plant or set into the ground
“plants” in this verse is neta'im. The word points to planted growth: something set into a place and allowed to take root there. Alongside the potters, it shows the king’s work as including both shaped objects and living growth.
ALSO GROWS
nata: to plant
נָטַע
It names the act behind the planted places among which these people dwell.
matta: a planting or plantation
מַטָּע
It carries the root into a place defined by what has been planted.
גְּדֵרוֹת
gederot
GROWS FROM
גדר
to enclose or mark a boundary with a fence or wall
The root gives the hedges a sense of enclosure and boundary, not just greenery. With shaping and planting, the verse presents a place made, grown, and held within edges where people live and work.
ALSO GROWS
gadar: to fence in or enclose
גָּדַר
It names the action that creates the boundary suggested by the hedges.
gederah: a fence or enclosure
גְּדֵרָה
It makes explicit the bounded place implied by the plural hedges in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Meaningful work is embodied in places people shape, cultivate, and inhabit.
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.THE THREAD
But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.The Hebrew word for potter in both verses comes from יצר (yatsar), meaning to form or shape. Isaiah opens the craft in this verse toward the deeper image of a maker giving form to what is in hand.
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