What Does 2 Chronicles 14:13 Mean?
And Asa and the people who were with him pursued them to Gerar, and the Ethiopians fell, that they could not rise, for they were broken before the LORD and before his camp, and they carried away very much spoil.
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 Asa and the people that were with him pursued them unto Gerar: and the Ethiopians were overthrown, that they could not recover themselves; for they were destroyed before the LORD, and before his host; and they carried away very much spoil.THE KEY
The defeat is not merely a retreat: the broken have no life-sustaining recovery left.
THE MEANING
The force Asa pursues is broken before the LORD and his host, with no recovery remaining. Asa and those with him carry away abundant spoil.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that every defeat leaves a way to recover: here, the text says recovery is gone.
THE ROOT
מִחְיָה
michyah
GROWS FROM
חיה
Live, be alive; preserve life.
“rise” in this verse is michyah. The phrase says there is no מִחְיָה (michyah, life-sustaining recovery) for them. The same root gives words for living and life, so the English idea of recovery opens onto something deeper: the absence of what sustains life.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive.
חַי
This branch shows that the root carries the sense of being alive, not only recovering from a setback.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This branch makes the verse’s “no recovery” resonate as the absence of life-sustaining possibility.
michyah: Sustenance; preservation of life.
מִחְיָה
This is the word in the verse and names what the defeated have no means to regain.
נִשְׁבְּרוּ
nishberu
GROWS FROM
שבר
Break, shatter.
The Hebrew verb describes the Ethiopians as broken before the LORD and his host. Paired with the absence of מִחְיָה (michyah, life-sustaining recovery), it presents a collapse with no renewal in view.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
This verbal branch reveals the force beneath the KJV’s “destroyed.”
shever: Breaking, fracture, ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun names the shattered condition that the verse places before the LORD and his host.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s intervention can break an opposing force decisively and change who holds the outcome.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea turned back to its strength at the face of the morning, and the Egyptians fled to meet it, and the LORD shook the Egyptians out into the midst of the sea.When Jehoshaphat and his people came to plunder them, they found among them, in abundance, goods along with the corpses, and desirable vessels, which they took for themselves, more than they could carry away. They were three days gathering the plunder, for it was so much.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.THE THREAD
And now, do not be pained, and do not let it burn in your eyes that you sold me here, for God sent me before you to keep alive.Genesis 45:5 uses the same Hebrew word מִחְיָה (michyah, preservation of life) that names what the Ethiopians lack here. The shared root חיה (chayah, live) holds both outcomes together: no life-sustaining recovery in this verse, and life preserved in Joseph’s words.
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