What Does 2 Chronicles 9:21 Mean in the King James?
For the king’s ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
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 ships’ three-year return is carried in a word for “years” whose root also means “repeat”: this is wealth arriving as a cycle.
THE MEANING
What reaches you has a route behind it: labor, distance, and time are already inside the arrival. The verse presents abundance as a recurring passage, with gold and silver beside living creatures. Its three-year rhythm makes return part of what wealth is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This dissolves the belief that visible abundance is self-contained: each arrival depends on carriers, distance, and time.
THE ROOT
שָׁנִים
shanim
GROWS FROM
שׁנה
shanah
Repeat, do again; change.
The Hebrew word for “years” grows from a root of repeating or doing again. The three-year wait has a pulse inside the wording: the cargo does not simply arrive once; it returns by a recurring cycle.
ALSO GROWS
shanah: Year; a recurring cycle.
שָׁנָה
The ships’ return is measured in years, making the interval part of the verse’s pattern of arrival.
shanah: Repeat, do again; change.
שָׁנָה
This branch brings the idea of recurrence into the three-year interval: the ships come again.
sheni: Second; next in sequence.
שֵׁנִי
The idea of what comes next echoes the verse’s repeated cycle of departure and return.
THE PATTERN
Material abundance moves through human networks of sea travel, labor, and exchange.
For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,THE THREAD
And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; it is because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.In Genesis, נִשְׁנָה (nishnah, “was repeated” or “doubled”) comes from שׁנה (shanah, “repeat, do again”), the same root beneath “years” here. The shared root lets the three-year return read as a cycle: the ships come again, and the cargo arrives again.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us