What Does 2 Chronicles 15:13 Mean?
Whoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel shall be put to death, from small to great, from man to woman.
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
That whosoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel should be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.THE KEY
Here, seeking is active pursuit, and refusing it carries a death sentence with no exemption for rank or sex.
THE MEANING
The claim reaches every person: refusing to seek the LORD is placed under death, from the least to the greatest, man or woman. The consequence named here is lethal, and no rank or sex creates an exemption.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that status or sex puts anyone outside this demand, or that refusal carries no consequence.
THE ROOT
יִדְרֹשׁ
yidrosh
GROWS FROM
דרש
darash
Seek, inquire, search out; also require.
English “seek” can sound like a passing wish, but יִדְרֹשׁ (yidrosh, “seek”) carries the force of active inquiry and pursuit. Here, that pursuit is the dividing line between life and death.
ALSO GROWS
midrash: Inquiry, interpretation, or exposition.
מִדְרָשׁ
Its connection to seeking shows the root at work in a sustained search for meaning.
derishah: Seeking, inquiry, or demand.
דְּרִישָׁה
The sense of demand reveals how this root can carry urgency and obligation as well as searching.
יוּמָת
yumat
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
Die; death.
“shall be put to death” in this verse is yumat. The Hebrew uses a passive form of the verb “die,” naming a death sentence imposed on the refuser. The word states death directly, without softening it into a figurative loss.
ALSO GROWS
mavet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun makes explicit the consequence already carried by the verb in the verse.
met: Dead; a dead person.
מֵת
This form shows the same root describing the resulting state, not just the act of dying.
THE PATTERN
The covenant claim is total, and refusing it carries severe consequences.
And the man who acts in a boiling over, and will not hear and respond to the priest who stands to serve there before the LORD your God, or to the judge, that man shall die. And you shall burn the evil out from Israel.If you let go of the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and finish you, after he has done you good.Whoever has set aside Moses' instruction dies without compassion under two or three witnesses.THE THREAD
But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him, if you seek him with all your heart and with all your living soul.The second “seek” here is תִדְרְשֶׁנּוּ (tidreshennu, “you seek him”), from the same root דרש (darash, “seek, inquire”) as יִדְרֹשׁ (yidrosh, “seek”) in the current verse. Here refusal carries death; there, seeking with the whole heart and soul leads to finding God, showing both the weight and the relational direction of the same word.
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