What Does 2 Chronicles 13:17 Mean?
And Abijah and his people struck them down with a great blow, so there fell down pierced of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men.
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 Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter: so there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats נכה (nākâ, “strike”) in both “slew” and “great slaughter,” making the mass death read as one escalating blow.
THE MEANING
This verse holds mass killing in plain view: Abijah and his people strike, and five hundred thousand chosen men of Israel lie slain. Abijah (אֲבִיָּה, ʾĂvîyāh, “Yah is my father”) is named as the victor, but that name does not explain or soften the violence the verse states.
THE ROOT
וַיַּכּוּם
wayyakkûm
GROWS FROM
נכה
to strike or smite
“struck them down” in this verse is wayyakkûm. The Hebrew uses this root for both the act of killing and the “great slaughter” that follows it. English separates the action from its result; the repeated root holds them together as one blow and its devastation.
ALSO GROWS
nākâ: to strike or smite
נָכָה
The verb behind “slew” gives the killing its physical force.
makkāh: a blow, wound, or plague
מַכָּה
The noun translated “slaughter” comes from the same root, naming the devastation as the blow itself.
בָּחוּר
bāḥûr
GROWS FROM
בחר
to choose or select
“chosen men” in this verse is bāḥûr. “Chosen” belongs to the language of selection. The verse counts selected men of Israel among the slain, keeping their identity in view within the overwhelming number.
ALSO GROWS
bāḥar: to choose or select
בָּחַר
This verb is the root’s act of choosing, echoed in the description of the fallen men.
bāḥîr: chosen or select one
בָּחִיר
This related form preserves the sense of selection carried by “chosen men.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture’s accounts of force sometimes keep its human cost visible by naming the dead, their number, or the bodies left behind.
And he struck Moab, and measured them with a cord, laying them down to the ground; and with two cords he measured to put to death, and with one full cord to keep alive. And so the Moabites became servants to David, and carried gifts.So all who fell that day of Benjamin were twenty-five thousand men who grasped the sword; all these were men of strength.And when he opens the fifth seal, I see beneath the altar the living souls of those slaughtered for the word of God and for the witness they held.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, In this you shall perceive that I am the LORD. Look, I will strike the waters that are in the river with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood.The same root, נכה (nākâ, “strike”), appears behind “slew” here and “smite” there. Exodus names the blow landing on water and turning it to blood; here the verse names the bodies and the dead.
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