What Does 2 Chronicles 10:5 Mean?
And he said to them, Go your way yet three days, then return to me. And the people went away.
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
And he said unto them, Come again unto me after three days. And the people departed.THE KEY
The pause does not cancel the return; it gives the return a time.
THE MEANING
A pause can be bounded without becoming abandonment. The people leave with a stated interval and a specific point of return, so the separation sits inside an exchange that is still open. Here, waiting belongs to the meeting rather than proving it is over.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a delayed answer means the door has closed: the interval is named, and return is already part of it.
THE ROOT
וְשׁוּבוּ
veshuvu
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
Turn back; return.
The verb translated “Come again” carries the movement of turning back or returning. The same root can describe a return or turning and the act of bringing something back, so the return itself is central to the appointed meeting.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return; a turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch names return as a movement, illuminating the request as more than a later appearance: it is a turning back toward the same point of encounter.
heshiv: Bring back; restore.
הֵשִׁיב
This form describes causing something to return, showing how the root can hold restoration alongside the movement back.
וַיֵּלְכוּ
vayyeleḵu
GROWS FROM
הָלַךְ
halakh
Go; walk.
“Go your way” in this verse is vayyeleḵu. The word translated “departed” comes from the root for going or walking, adding the sense of movement underway. Beside the root for return, the people’s leaving becomes one movement in an exchange that remains open.
ALSO GROWS
halikhah: Walking; going.
הֲלִיכָה
This noun keeps the root’s sense of movement, echoing the people’s departure as a going rather than a fixed ending.
holekh: One who goes or walks.
הוֹלֵךְ
This form describes someone in motion, reinforcing the passage’s pairing of going away with a return still ahead.
THE PATTERN
A departure can remain temporary when return is named as the next movement.
Then she rose with her daughters-in-law, and turned back from the field of Moab, for she had heard in the field of Moab that the LORD had visited his people by giving them bread.Come, and let us turn back to the LORD, for he has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck, and he will bind us up.Turn around, then, and turn back, so that your shortcomings may be wiped away, and the times of breathing again may come from the face of the LORD.THE THREAD
From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes, and you have not guarded them. Turn back to me, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, How shall we turn back?Both “return” verbs here share the Hebrew root שׁוּב (shuv), meaning to turn back or return, with “Come again” in the current verse. Malachi adds a reciprocal return, opening the three-day pause as an interval with a way back still in view.
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