What Does 2 Chronicles 15:6 Mean?
And nation was broken by nation, and city by city, for God stirred them in every narrow place.
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 nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity.THE KEY
The verse uses the language of crushing to show conflict moving both ways: each nation breaks another and is itself broken.
THE MEANING
The verse lays out violence that reproduces itself: nation crushes nation, and city crushes city. It also names God as the one who vexes them amid adversity, holding divine disruption and human ruin together in the same scene.
THE ROOT
כֻּתְּתוּ
kuttetu
GROWS FROM
כתת
כָּתַת (kātat): to beat, pound, or crush into pieces.
“broken” in this verse is kuttetu. The verb behind “destroyed” carries the force of being hammered apart. The same root describes beaten olive oil and weapons beaten into tools; here that force falls on nations and cities, and the verse does not soften its violence.
ALSO GROWS
kāthith: Beaten or pounded; used to describe olive oil prepared for the lamp.
כָּתִית
The same root moves from the crushing of communities to the preparation of oil, making the force in “destroyed” tactile rather than abstract.
kittetu: They beat or hammered into pieces.
כִּתְּתוּ
Isaiah uses this form for swords turned into tools, showing the same root can name what is broken and what violence is made to relinquish.
THE PATTERN
When destabilization takes hold, conflict reproduces itself from one community to the next.
And I will stir Egypt against Egypt; each man will fight his brother, and each his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in place after place.For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the settlers of mount Seir, to have them devoted to destruction and to destroy them. When they had finished with the settlers of Seir, each one helped to destroy another.THE THREAD
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall set right many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they train for war anymore.The Hebrew verb כִּתְּתוּ (kittetu, they beat) in Isaiah comes from the same root כתת (kātat, to beat or crush) as “destroyed” here. In Isaiah, swords take the force of that beating and become tools; the root remains, while what is broken and what follows from it change.
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