What Does 2 Chronicles 13:20 Mean?
Jeroboam did not add strength again in the days of Abijah, and the LORD struck him, and he died.
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
Neither did Jeroboam recover strength again in the days of Abijah: and the LORD struck him, and he died.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “struck” shares its root with “plague,” giving the LORD’s blow the force of a bodily affliction that ends in death.
THE MEANING
You meet a stark limit: strength does not return, and the LORD’s strike ends in death. Jeroboam is named as the one struck, so the verse holds divine judgment in bodily, mortal terms.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a ruler’s strength makes him beyond the reach of death.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגְּפֵהוּ
wayyiggefehu
GROWS FROM
נ־ג־ף
n-g-p
Strike, smite, inflict a blow.
“struck” in this verse is wayyiggefehu. The root names the direct blow here, and its derived noun also names a plague. The word family links sudden impact with affliction, giving the LORD’s action the bodily force the sentence states.
ALSO GROWS
maggephah: Plague, pestilence.
מַגֵּפָה
This related noun carries the same root from a single blow into an affliction that strikes more broadly.
niggaph: Be struck, be defeated.
נִגַּף
This passive form shows the other side of the blow: the one who is struck bears its consequence.
THE PATTERN
Divine judgment is described as a concrete blow, with bodily death or the threat of a deadly strike close to view.
About ten days later, the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.For the LORD will cross through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will leap over the opening, and will not give the ruiner leave to come into your houses to strike you.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.THE THREAD
About ten days later, the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.“Smote” here and “struck” in 2 Chronicles come from the same Hebrew root, נ־ג־ף (n-g-p), meaning to strike or smite. In both verses the blow is attributed to the LORD, and death follows.
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