What Does 1 Kings 6:4 Mean in the King James?
And for the house he made windows of narrow lights.
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 verse describes an opening for light with a root that evokes looking out and an adjective that means closed: illumination arrives through a boundary, not through boundlessness.
THE MEANING
Light enters the house through openings whose shape remains bounded. The verse holds looking-through and closure together: an aperture can admit light while still screening and directing what passes through. Your sight, too, arrives through a frame shaped by what is open and what is held back.
THE ROOT
שְׁקֻפִים
shequfim
GROWS FROM
שקף
sh-q-p
To look out, look down, or overlook.
The word rendered “narrow lights” comes from a root of looking out or down; it names an opening by the seeing it permits. Paired with the verse’s word for “closed,” it holds looking-through and boundedness together.
ALSO GROWS
shaqaf: To look out or down.
שָׁקַף
The root verb makes the window’s function of looking through part of its word-family.
mashqof: Lintel, the upper frame of a doorway.
מַשְׁקוֹף
This related word names a built boundary over an opening, joining the act of looking out with the frame that shapes it.
אֲטֻמִים
atumim
GROWS FROM
אטם
ʾ-ṭ-m
To stop up, close, or make inaccessible.
“closed” in this verse is atumim. The word keeps closure inside the description of the window. The opening is not a formless gap: the verse presents its bounded shape as part of how light reaches the house.
ALSO GROWS
otem: One who or that which closes or stops up.
אֹטֵם
This participial form makes the root’s action of closing visible within the description of a window.
atimah: Closure or stopping up.
אֲטִימָה
This noun carries the root’s sense of closure, reinforcing that the opening has a defined limit.
חַלּוֹן
ḥallōn
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To hollow out or pierce.
“windows” in this verse is ḥallōn. The word for “window” is linked to hollowing or piercing through. The house receives light by a passage opened through its solid boundary.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: A hollow or cavity; also, one who has been pierced.
חָלָל
Its sense of a hollowed or pierced space illuminates the window as an opening through a wall.
ḥālîl: A flute or hollow pipe.
חָלִיל
This branch names a hollow channel, echoing the window as a formed passage through which something can travel.
THE PATTERN
Light and sight travel through openings whose form shapes what can pass and be seen.
And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house; and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.The Hebrew word for “window,” חַלּוֹן (ḥallōn, window), appears in both verses. In 1 Kings, the window is described by its bounded form; in Genesis, it frames what can be seen, showing the opening as a passage that shapes sight.
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