What Does 1 Kings 4:23 Mean in the King James?

Ten fat oxen, and twenty oxen out of the pastures, and an hundred sheep, beside harts, and roebucks, and fallowdeer, and fatted fowl.

1 Kings 4:23 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The table’s abundance is fed by the same root that names a shepherd: what sustains the feast begins in tending.

THE MEANING

The verse makes provision concrete: strong cattle, grazing cattle, a flock, wild game, and fattened birds. What reaches the table comes from living creatures sustained through feeding and care. The abundance is visible at the feast, but its roots are in the pasture.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the idea that provision appears fully formed, detached from the care that sustains it.

THE ROOT

רְעִי

re'i

GROWS FROM

רעה

To tend, pasture, feed, or shepherd.

“pastures” in this verse is re'i. The word for the grazing cattle comes from ⁨רעה⁩ (ra’ah), the root that also names shepherding and feeding. The English list can make the animals seem like a store of provisions; the Hebrew root keeps their ongoing care in view.

ALSO GROWS

ro'eh: One who tends a flock.

רֹעֶה

The grazing cattle belong to a world of tending, not just counting.

ra'ah: To feed or pasture a flock.

רָעָה

The same root names the act that sustains the animals before they become food.

THE PATTERN

Provision takes shape through the tending and feeding of living creatures.

A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 23:1 · KJVThe same Hebrew root names the shepherd whose tending is joined to having no lack.

Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds.

Proverbs 27:23 · KJVProvision depends on sustained attention to the condition of the flock and herd.

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Matthew 6:26 · KJVThe verse presents feeding as an ongoing expression of care for living creatures.

THE THREAD

A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Psalm 23:1 · KJV

The Hebrew root behind the grazing cattle in 1 Kings also names a shepherd. Psalm 23:1 makes that connection explicit: the one who tends is also the source of provision.

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