Kishi is a name found in the King James Bible, appearing 1 time in the text.
Who This Was
Kishi was a Levite of the tribe of Levi, belonging to the line of Merari, which was one of the three main divisions of the Levitical order (alongside the Gershonites and the Kohathites). He is mentioned only once in Scripture, in the genealogical records of 1 Chronicles, where he appears as the father of Ethan. The Chronicler lists him in a chain of descent: Ethan the son of Kishi, the son of Abdi, the son of Malluch. Beyond this single genealogical notice, the Bible records nothing else about Kishi’s life, work, or death.
The setting of this mention is the great genealogical survey that opens 1 Chronicles, in which the returning exiles of Judah are traced back through the tribes and especially through the priestly and Levitical families. In 1 Chronicles 6, the writer details the descendants of Levi and assigns them their duties, particularly their roles in the service of the temple and in music. Kishi’s son Ethan is identified as one of the musicians appointed for the worship of Israel, standing among the sons of Merari who “stood on the left hand” in the arrangement of the temple singers.
What Scripture says of Kishi is therefore very little, but it is not nothing. He is remembered as the father of a man who served in the sacred ministry of music before the Lord. Kishi himself performs no recorded deed, speaks no recorded word, and receives no recorded command or promise. His significance in the biblical record is that he belongs to the lineage of Levi and that he stands in the ancestral line of a worshiper. He is one link in a chain of faithfulness that reached from the wilderness wanderings to the temple courts.
The Name
The name Kishi is a Hebrew name, and its meaning is not clearly recoverable from the biblical text. Some have suggested a connection to a root related to a snare or a fowler’s trap, while others have proposed a link to a word for bow or to a shortened form of a longer theophoric name, but none of these proposals is firmly established. Because Scripture gives no interpretation of the name and the etymology is uncertain, it is best to say plainly that the meaning of Kishi is not clearly known. What matters for the reader is not the meaning of the name but the place of the man in the line of Levi and in the family of a temple musician.
A Closing Thought
Most of us will never be remembered by name in a great record. Kishi appears once, in a list, as the father of a man who sang in the house of the Lord. Yet that single line is enough to show that God keeps account of the ordinary generations—the parents and grandparents whose quiet faithfulness prepares the way for those who serve. Kishi may have done nothing the world would call notable, but he raised a son who stood among the worshipers of Israel. Faithfulness often looks like that: hidden, brief, and fruitful beyond what we can see.
At a Glance
- Gender: Male
- Testament: Old
- Mentions in the KJV: 1
Where It Appears in Scripture
- 1 Chronicles 6:44 — And their brethren the sons of Merari stood on the left hand: Ethan the son of Kishi, the son of Abdi, the son of Malluch,