What Does 1 Chronicles 4:40 Mean in the King James?
And they found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old.
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 land’s abundance is measured in room and quiet, while the closing clause preserves the memory that others had lived there before.
THE MEANING
You meet abundance here as good pasture, broad land, and settled quiet: room where life can flourish. Yet the land’s quiet does not erase its story; the verse names the people of Ham who had dwelt there before.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Quietness is not proof of vacancy: the verse calls the land quiet and peaceable while saying the people of Ham had dwelt there before.
THE ROOT
רַחֲבַת יָדַיִם
rachavat yadayim
GROWS FROM
ר־ח־ב
r-ḥ-b
To be wide, become spacious, or make room.
“wide” in this verse is rachavat yadayim. The phrase is literally “broad of hands,” making spaciousness something you can feel as open room. The same root names a broad place reached out of narrowness; here, breadth is part of what makes the pasture livable.
ALSO GROWS
rachav: To be wide or become spacious.
רָחַב
This verb carries the land’s quality of breadth back to its seed: width as room opening up.
merchav: A broad place or open expanse.
מֶרְחָב
This noun shows how the root’s spaciousness can name a place in which life has room to unfold.
שֹׁקֶטֶת
shoqetet
GROWS FROM
ש־ק־ט
sh-q-ṭ
To be quiet, at rest, or undisturbed.
The root carries more than silence: it can describe a state of rest or freedom from disturbance. Paired with breadth and good pasture, quiet describes settled conditions, while the final clause still names earlier inhabitants.
ALSO GROWS
shaqat: To be quiet, rest, or remain undisturbed.
שָׁקַט
The verb reveals quiet as a state the land is in, not merely a sound it lacks.
sheqet: Quietness, rest, or cessation of disturbance.
שֶׁקֶט
This noun makes the land’s quiet a condition of settled life, held alongside the verse’s mention of prior habitation.
THE PATTERN
Life flourishes where it has room to spread and quiet enough to settle.
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places;For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.THE THREAD
He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.Psalm’s “large place” is מֶרְחָב (merchav, “broad place”), from the same ר־ח־ב (r-ḥ-b, “be wide or make room”) root as “wide” here. There, breadth is reached through deliverance from distress; here, it describes pastureland whose room makes abundance possible.
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