What Does 2 Samuel 23:34 Mean in the King James?

Eliphelet the son of Ahasbai, the son of the Maachathite, Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite,

2 Samuel 23:34 · 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.

THE KEY

A genealogy is a line of relationships, but Eliphelet also places deliverance among the names that line carries.

THE MEANING

This verse presents a life within relationships: you are named as part of a line, while each person in that line remains distinct. The repeated “son” carries each name forward without making the people interchangeable.

THE ROOT

בֵּן

ben

GROWS FROM

בנה

b-n-h

To build or establish.

Hebrew links ⁨בֵּן⁩ (ben, “son”) with ⁨בָּנָה⁩ (banah, “build”), letting sonship echo the building of a line. With “son” repeated through this verse, descent sounds like something taking shape one generation at a time.

ALSO GROWS

banah: To build.

בָּנָה

The related building word lets each “son” carry the sense of a line being formed.

mivneh: A structure or form.

מִבְנֶה

This branch makes the lineage’s structure audible beneath the list of individual names.

אֱלִיפֶלֶט

Eliphelet

GROWS FROM

פלט

p-l-ṭ

To escape or deliver; the root carries the sense of coming through danger.

“Eliphelet” in this verse is Eliphelet. The name joins ⁨אֵל⁩ (ʾel, “God”) with a form from ⁨פלט⁩ (p-l-ṭ, “escape, deliverance”), carrying the sense “God is deliverance.” A name in this genealogy holds more than ancestry: it carries the language of deliverance within the line.

ALSO GROWS

palit: A survivor or one who has escaped.

פָּלִיט

The root can name the person who comes through, not only the act of escape.

peletah: Escape or deliverance.

פְּלֵיטָה

This branch makes the deliverance carried in Eliphelet’s name explicit.

THE PATTERN

Scripture carries identity forward through named kinship, making the line itself part of what a name means.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Genesis 5:1 · KJVThe genealogy begins by naming Adam and setting him within the account of his origin.

And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Ruth 4:17 · KJVObed’s name is spoken within a family line that carries forward through Jesse to David.

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1:1 · KJVMatthew names Jesus through his relationships to David and Abraham, placing identity inside a lineage.

THE THREAD

The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

Psalm 18:2 · KJV

Eliphelet draws on ⁨פלט⁩ (p-l-ṭ, “escape, deliverance”), the same root behind “my deliverer” here. The root links a name in a family line with a direct naming of the LORD as deliverer.

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