What Does 1 Chronicles 21:14 Mean?

So the LORD set pestilence upon Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell.

1 Chronicles 21:14 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

So the LORD sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men.

THE KEY

The verse names the LORD as the one who sends the plague, holding divine agency and seventy thousand deaths in the same sentence.

THE MEANING

The verse names a devastating judgment: the LORD sends pestilence upon Israel, and seventy thousand men fall. It holds the source of the plague and its human cost together without softening either.

THE ROOT

וַיִּשְׁלַח

wayyishlach

GROWS FROM

שלח

sh-l-ḥ

To send or send forth; also to release or let go.

“set” in this verse is wayyishlach. The root makes the direction of the act clear: the LORD is the sender, and pestilence is what is sent. The same root can carry the sense of release, but here that sending ends in devastating loss.

ALSO GROWS

shaliach: A commissioned messenger or agent.

שָׁלִיחַ

This branch keeps the sender and the sent one joined in the word’s meaning, as they are in this verse.

shilluach: Sending away or dismissal; release.

שִׁלּוּחַ

It shows the root can name something released from its source; here, what is sent brings death upon Israel.

THE PATTERN

These passages name judgment as an act whose cost is borne in human bodies.

Now those who died in the striking were fourteen thousand and seven hundred, apart from those who died about the word of Korah.

Numbers 16:49 · SDVThe plague is recorded through the people who die, making the bodily cost explicit.

And at once the messenger of the LORD struck him, because he did not give God the weight, and he was eaten by worms and breathed out his last.

Acts 12:23 · SDVJudgment is named as an act, and its consequence is described in the body.

THE THREAD

For at this time I will send all my blows upon your heart, and upon your servants, and upon your people, so that you may perceive that there is none like me in all the earth.

Exodus 9:14 · SDV

Exodus uses the same Hebrew root, ⁨שָׁלַח⁩ (shalach, to send), for the LORD sending plagues. Here the same verb carries a terrible cost: seventy thousand lives.

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