What Does Zechariah 12:13 Mean?
The family of the house of Levi, and their wives alone; the family of Shimei, and their wives apart;
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart;THE KEY
The repeated “apart” lets this mourning be communal without making its households, and their wives, indistinguishable.
THE MEANING
When grief gathers people into one event, your place in it remains particular: Levi’s household and Shimei’s household are named apart, and their wives are named apart as well. Shared mourning does not make the people within it interchangeable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that shared grief requires people to disappear into one undifferentiated crowd.
THE ROOT
לְבַד
levad
GROWS FROM
בדד
To be separate or alone.
“alone and apart” in this verse is levad. Hebrew repeats לְבַד (levad) four times here, from בדד (badad), a root also used for being alone. English preserves the repetition, while the root links the households’ separateness with the inward solitude grief can carry.
ALSO GROWS
badad: Alone; by oneself.
בָּדָד
The same root appears in Lamentations 3:28 for sitting alone, revealing an inward shade beneath the households’ separateness.
levad: Apart; alone.
לְבַד
This form repeats for both families and their wives, giving each a distinct place within the shared mourning.
שִׁמְעִי
Shim'i
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear or listen.
The name Shimei carries the sense “heard.” Beside the repeated “apart,” the name gives this household a distinct presence within the larger mourning.
ALSO GROWS
shama: Hear; listen.
שָׁמַע
This hearing-root underlies the family name Shimei, giving its naming an additional layer within the lament.
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
This branch carries hearing into response, adding relational depth to a passage that names each family separately.
THE PATTERN
Shared mourning can encompass a community while leaving each person and household distinct.
All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to leap.Jesus wept.THE THREAD
He sits alone and keeps silence, for he takes it up upon himself.The Hebrew word behind “apart” shares the בדד (badad, alone or separate) root with the word rendered “alone” here. Zechariah applies that separateness across households and spouses; Lamentations turns the same root inward, toward someone sitting alone under what he bears.
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