Verse Lens · Expanded explanation
1 Chronicles 7:23 Explained in Context
Use this verse as a doorway into the larger passage—not as an isolated saying.
Verse 23. 23And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son, and he called his name Beriah, because it went evil with his house.
King James Version — public domain in the United States · Bible text and permissions
Quick Meaning
Records a child named Beriah within household calamity.
Read It With
- 1 Chronicles 7:20–7:29
Records a child named Beriah within household calamity. Read 1 Chronicles 7:23 within 7:20–7:29. The complete unit records: Ephraim's sons are killed during a cattle raid, the household mourns, Beriah is born amid disaster, Sheerah builds towns, and the line reaches Joshua and Josephite settlements.
Why This Verse Appears Here
The genealogy becomes miniature narrative, refusing to reduce ancestry to names by preserving grief, a woman's building work, and territorial memory. In this exact position, the line beginning “And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son,…” records a child named Beriah within household calamity.
Follow the Context
- Ephraim's sons are killed during a cattle raid, the household mourns, Beriah is born amid disaster, Sheerah builds towns, and the line reaches Joshua and Josephite settlements.
- The genealogy becomes miniature narrative, refusing to reduce ancestry to names by preserving grief, a woman's building work, and territorial memory.
Phrase-by-Phrase Explanation
“And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son,…”
In plain language: Records a child named Beriah within household calamity.
The line beginning “And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son,…” records a child named Beriah within household calamity.
Why it matters: The wording carries a material literary, historical, temple, royal-power, violence, ethnic, illness, gender, exile, reception, or misuse boundary.
How certain? probableWhat This Verse Is Not Saying
The passage does not blame mourners, romanticize cattle violence, erase Sheerah, turn her into a fantasy biography, or grant modern title to named towns.
What Remains True
Records a child named Beriah within household calamity. This concrete detail supports a bounded truth: Communal memory must preserve real people, households, disruptions, and belonging without turning ancestry into superiority, spiritual rank, or entitlement.
How It Can Shape Life
- Because this verse records a child named Beriah within household calamity, keep it inside 7:20–7:29, compare its Samuel-Kings relationship honestly, protect affected people from coercion or stigma, and apply only the accountable principle the complete unit supports.
Teach It Back
Explain why 1 Chronicles 7:23 records a child named Beriah within household calamity. Use 7:20–7:29, paraphrase “And when he went in to his wife, she conceived, and bare a son,…,” state one source or reconstruction limit, identify one person or group power can obscure, and reject one conclusion this verse does not authorize.
Your explanation stays in this browser. It is not sent or saved.
Continue in Context
The full thought-unit study remains the final contextual authority for this Verse Lens.
Read 1 Chronicles 7:20–7:29 — Ephraim's line holds killing, mourning, Sheerah's building, and JoshuaSources used for this Verse Lens
How certain is this explanation? probable
Where care is needed
1 Chronicles 7:23 remains within this thought-unit limit: The chronology relative to Exodus traditions and the textual witnesses for Sheerah's building differ. The recent proposal that the earliest inferable text names her as builder is plausible, not certain.
These are the sources used directly for this lens. Language, grammar, disagreements, and the complete source shelf remain attached to the full thought-unit research record.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact KJV wording, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete verse coverage for this thought unit.
Exact location: 1 Chronicles 7:20–7:29, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: 1 Chronicles
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Hebrew wording, morphology, names, clauses, regnal formulas, temple vocabulary, older-English controls, and translation limits.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/1Chr.xml, Masoretic words and morphology for 7:20–7:29
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible Full Notes: 1 Chronicles
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press; STEP Bible presentation, 2019 edition; current web presentation
Supports: Unit-bounded translation comparisons and only those lexical, textual, grammatical, numerical, historical, and parallel-passage notes attached to these verses.
Exact location: STEP Bible NET2full, 1 Chronicles 7:20–7:29, verse-attached translation and translator notes
Open source ↗