What Does 1 Chronicles 4:32 Mean in the King James?
And their villages were, Etam, and Ain, Rimmon, and Tochen, and Ashan, five cities:
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
Ain carries the Hebrew word for both “eye” and “spring,” so one place name holds both sight and a source of water.
THE MEANING
You meet a landscape made legible through names: Etam, Ain, Rimmon, Tochen, and Ashan, gathered into five cities. Ain keeps “eye” and “spring” in one word, so a place name can hold both a bodily opening and a source of water.
THE ROOT
עַיִן
ʿayin
GROWS FROM
עין
Eye; also a spring or source of water.
“Ain” in this verse is ʿayin. The Hebrew word is used for both an eye and a spring. The place name therefore carries two concrete senses, an opening for sight and a source of water, that the transliterated English name conceals.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye
עַיִן
The same Hebrew form names the organ of sight, giving Ain a bodily sense beyond its sound as a place name.
ʿên: Spring or water source, especially in place names
עֵין
This form makes Ain a source-place: a settlement named through the water that emerges there.
וַחֲצֵרֵיהֶם
vaḥaṣērêhem
GROWS FROM
חצר
Enclosure or enclosed court; the word also names a village or settlement.
The word translated “villages” carries the sense of bounded enclosures. The verse presents the named places as settlements with surrounding spaces, not merely labels on a list.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṣēr: Courtyard, enclosure, or village
חָצֵר
Its range joins a bounded court to a settlement, keeping enclosure inside the word “village.”
ḥăṣērîm: Villages or settlements
חֲצֵרִים
This plural form names the surrounding settlements gathered into the verse’s count of five cities.
THE PATTERN
Communities take shape through named lands and bounded places of dwelling.
By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.Ain, Remmon, and Ether, and Ashan; four cities and their villages:And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;THE THREAD
And all their villages that were round about the same cities, unto Baal. These were their habitations, and their genealogy.The next verse repeats the enclosure-and-settlement word for the villages around these cities, then calls the places their habitations and ties them to their genealogy. The shared root carries the list from bounded settlements into the lived map of a people.
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