What Does 2 Chronicles 15:7 Mean?
And you, hold fast, and do not let your hands drop, for there are wages for your work.
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
Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded.THE KEY
The word translated “weak” carries the sense of letting go: the verse joins hands that stay firm with work that has a reward.
THE MEANING
Your work can feel heavy enough that your hands want to drop, yet its value is not exhausted by how it feels now. The verse says there is a real recompense for the work you carry.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that tired hands mean wasted work, that what is difficult to sustain has no return.
THE ROOT
יִרְפּוּ
yirpu
GROWS FROM
רפה
To slacken, release, or let drop.
“do not let your hands drop” in this verse is yirpu. The Hebrew describes hands slackening or letting go, not merely feeling weak. The same root can describe releasing a grip, so the verse’s image is hands that do not drop their work before its reward.
ALSO GROWS
harpu: Release; let go (Psalm 46:10, KJV: “Be still”).
הַרְפּוּ
The shared root reveals the release held inside “be still,” while this verse speaks of hands not slackening from their work.
wayyiref: He let go or released (Exodus 4:26, KJV: “So he let him go”).
וַיִּרֶף
This form makes the root’s sense of letting go concrete and illuminates the movement carried by “weak.”
חִזְקוּ
chizqu
GROWS FROM
חזק
To be firm, strong, or hold fast.
“hold fast” in this verse is chizqu. “Strong” and “weak” describe opposite movements in the hands: holding firm and slackening. The verse sets the posture of steadiness beside the promise that the work has recompense.
ALSO GROWS
chazaq: Be firm or strong.
חָזַק
This is the root beneath the verse’s call for strength, making firmness a bodily image as well as an inner one.
chizzeq: Strengthened or made firm.
חִזֵּק
This related form shows the same root’s movement toward firmness and steadiness.
שָׂכָר
sachar
GROWS FROM
שכר
Wages, hire, or recompense.
“wages” in this verse is sachar. The Hebrew says there is שָׂכָר (sachar), a wage or recompense, for the work. The promise gives the labor a concrete return: it is not empty or forgotten.
ALSO GROWS
sachar: To hire or pay wages.
שָׂכַר
The verb’s language of payment gives “reward” the sense of something due for work.
sakhir: A hired worker.
שָׂכִיר
This related word joins labor directly to the wages or recompense named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Labor carries a real yield, and its value is not forgotten.
In all toil there is a remainder, but the word of the lips only bends toward lack.While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.For God is not out of alignment to forget your work and the toil of love, which you have shown toward his nature, in that you have served the set-apart ones, and still serve.THE THREAD
Release your grip, and perceive that I AM God; I am lifted high among the nations, I am lifted high in the earth.The Hebrew הַרְפּוּ (harpu, release or let go) in Psalm 46:10 shares the root רפה with “weak” here. In this verse, hands are not to slacken from their work; in the Psalm, the same root opens the image of releasing a grip.
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