Sisamai is a name found in the King James Bible, appearing 1 time in the text.
Who This Was
Sisamai was a man of the tribe of Judah, descended from Caleb through the line of Jerahmeel. He appears only once in the King James Bible, in the genealogical record of 1 Chronicles 2:40: “And Eleasah begat Sisamai, and Sisamai begat Shallum.” He was the son of Eleasah and the father of Shallum, and he lived during the long centuries between the patriarchs and the monarchy of Israel, a period in which the family lines of Judah were preserved and passed down.
The setting of Sisamai’s appearance is a genealogy—one of the lengthy registers that open 1 Chronicles. After the return from Babylonian exile, the Chronicler set out to trace the ancestry of Judah and the other tribes, establishing the identity of God’s people and their rightful inheritance. Sisamai is one link in the Calebite branch of that record, a name listed alongside his father and his son in the chain of descent.
Scripture says nothing else about Sisamai. It records no deed, no word, no event of his life. He is known only as a name in a lineage, a single verse in a long list. Yet that is precisely what the text preserves of him: he lived, he belonged to the covenant people, and he passed the line forward to the next generation.
The Name
The name Sisamai is a Hebrew personal name whose meaning is not clearly recoverable. It is rare, appearing only here in the Hebrew Bible, and it has no obvious parallel elsewhere in Scripture that would settle its sense. Some have suggested possible connections to words for a swallow or to an otherwise unknown root, but none of these proposals is well established. Because the meaning cannot be stated with confidence, it is best to say so plainly rather than assign a meaning the text does not support.
A Closing Thought
Most of us will never be remembered in a chronicle or carved into a monument. Sisamai’s entire legacy in Scripture is one verse: he was born, he fathered a son, and the line continued. Yet that quiet faithfulness mattered. The promised Messiah would come through Judah’s line, and every ordinary link in that chain—including this obscure man—played its part. God’s great purposes are often carried forward not by the famous but by the faithful and forgotten. Your unseen obedience, too, is held in the hands of the One who remembers every name.
At a Glance
- Gender: Male
- Testament: Old
- Mentions in the KJV: 1
Where It Appears in Scripture
- 1 Chronicles 2:40 — And Eleasah begat Sisamai, and Sisamai begat Shallum,