What Does 2 Chronicles 16:12 Mean?
And Asa, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, was sick in his feet, until his sickness was exceedingly great. Yet in his sickness he sought not the LORD, but the healers.
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 in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.THE KEY
Asa’s illness grows severe, but the verse’s sharpest crisis is that his seeking turns to healers while leaving the LORD unconsulted.
THE MEANING
When your body is in real distress, you can seek people who treat it while still leaving the LORD outside your seeking. The verse holds both facts together: Asa’s illness is severe, and he does not seek the LORD.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A grave illness is only a medical matter, with no question of where your seeking is placed.
THE ROOT
דָּרַשׁ
darash
GROWS FROM
דרש
darash
To seek out or inquire; to turn toward someone or something for an answer or help.
“sought not” in this verse is darash. Darash carries the sense of seeking by turning toward and inquiring. The verse’s contrast is about where Asa directs that seeking: toward physicians, without seeking the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
derishah: Inquiry, investigation, or search.
דְּרִישָׁה
It shows that seeking can mean more than looking for someone; it can mean making them the one you turn to for answers.
midrash: Interpretation or exposition developed through inquiry.
מִדְרָשׁ
This branch keeps the root’s sense of active searching visible beneath the simple English word “sought.”
רֹפְאִים
rof'im
GROWS FROM
רפא
rapha
To heal or restore.
The Hebrew names the physicians with a word from the root for healing: they are healers. That root gives their work its full weight while the verse marks the absence of the LORD from Asa’s seeking; it does not make medical care itself the enemy.
ALSO GROWS
rophe: A healer or physician.
רֹפֵא
This is the singular form of the word used for the physicians Asa seeks.
refu'ah: Healing or a remedy.
רְפוּאָה
It makes plain that the word family centers on healing, the very relief Asa seeks.
חָלְיוֹ
choly
GROWS FROM
חלה
chalah
To be sick or become weak.
“sickness” in this verse is choly. The root recurs in the verse’s language of illness: Asa is diseased, his disease grows exceedingly great, and he seeks while ill. The wording keeps his bodily weakness present through the whole scene.
ALSO GROWS
choleh: A sick or ill person.
חֹלֶה
It names the person as being in the condition described in Asa’s verse.
machalah: Illness or disease.
מַחֲלָה
It carries the same root into the noun for sickness, echoing the repeated disease language.
THE PATTERN
In bodily distress, the direction of a person’s seeking reveals whether the LORD is included in the search for healing.
O LORD my God, I cried out to you, and you healed me.Who releases all your crookedness; who heals all your sicknesses.Is anyone among you without strength? Let him call to himself the older ones of the assembly, and let them pray over him, rubbing him with oil in the nature of the LORD.THE THREAD
O LORD my God, I cried out to you, and you healed me.The Hebrew verb translated “healed” comes from רפא (rapha, heal), the same root behind רֹפְאִים (rof’im, healers) in Asa’s verse. Here the speaker addresses the LORD and names healing; the shared root brings Asa’s choice of where to seek into focus.
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