What Does 1 Kings 6:18 Mean in the King James?
And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen.
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 stone remains beneath the cedar, but the interior presents itself as a surface of bursting buds and open flowers.
THE MEANING
Stone remains in the structure, though the eye meets cedar patterned with buds and blossoms. אֶבֶן (even, stone) can be read as a word-shape holding אָב (av, father) and בֵּן (ben, son); the foundation is out of sight, not erased. The inner house is seen through what its surface reveals.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is hidden has ceased to be present: the stone remains part of the house even when cedar covers it.
THE ROOT
צִצִּים
tsitsim
GROWS FROM
צוץ
tsuts
To blossom, sprout, or put forth a flower.
“open flowers” in this verse is tsitsim. צִצִּים names blossoms, forms that have opened into view. The same root describes a rod putting forth blossoms, so the carved house carries an image of life emerging from what seemed still.
ALSO GROWS
tsits: A blossom or flower.
צִיץ
This singular form gives the carved flowers their concrete sense: the cedar surface is patterned with visible bloom.
vayatsits: And it blossomed, or put forth a flower.
וַיָּצֵץ
In Numbers 17:8, the same root describes Aaron’s rod blossoming, linking the temple’s carved motif with life emerging from a bare branch.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures God’s dwelling and its people through living forms, making the house a place of growth rather than inert material.
Three bowls made like unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick.The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.The Hebrew word וַיָּצֵץ (vayatsits, “and it blossomed”) shares the root צוץ (tsuts, “to blossom”) with the flowers carved into the cedar. In one verse, bloom is cut into the house’s surface; in the other, it emerges from a bare rod.
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