What Does Numbers 3:25 Mean in the King James?
And the charge of the sons of Gershon in the tabernacle of the congregation shall be the tabernacle, and the tent, the covering thereof, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,
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 charge names a keeping that extends across the dwelling’s coverings and its entrance.
THE MEANING
The entrusted responsibility is concrete: it includes the dwelling, its tent, its covering, and the hanging at its entrance. What is set apart in your life is held through care for the structures that shelter it and mark its threshold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that only what happens inside a sacred space matters; its coverings and entrance belong to its keeping too.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
mishmeret
GROWS FROM
שׁמר
To keep, guard, or watch over.
English “charge” can sound like a burden or a job assignment; מִשְׁמֶרֶת (mishmeret) carries the sense of guarded keeping. Here that keeping reaches the dwelling’s coverings and entrance, making the protection of its threshold part of tending the meeting place.
ALSO GROWS
shamar: Keep, guard, watch over.
שָׁמַר
The verb names the act at the heart of the entrusted charge.
mishmar: Watch, guard duty.
מִשְׁמָר
It shows how the root can name an assigned period or post of keeping.
shomer: Keeper, watcher.
שֹׁמֵר
It names the one who carries out the watch, making responsibility an active form of care.
THE PATTERN
What is entrusted is sustained through watchful keeping.
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.THE THREAD
And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.Genesis uses שָׁמַר (shamar, to keep or guard) for the human’s care of the garden, the same root beneath the “charge” here. The two verses connect entrusted care of a place with the keeping of what shelters and defines it.
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