What Does 2 Chronicles 17:12 Mean?
And Jehoshaphat grew exceedingly great, and he built in Judah fortresses, and cities of stores.
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 Jehoshaphat waxed great exceedingly; and he built in Judah castles, and cities of store.THE KEY
The verse’s greatness is motion that takes shape as shelter and stored provision.
THE MEANING
Here, greatness is something that grows and becomes tangible in strongholds and store cities. Expansion takes the form of protection and provision, structures that hold what matters in the reader’s life now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the assumption that greatness is only rank or display. Here, increase also means creating forms that shelter and preserve.
THE ROOT
הֹלֵךְ וְגָדֵל עַד־לְמַעְלָה
holekh ve-gadel ad-lema‘lah
GROWS FROM
גדל
g-d-l
grow, become great
“grew exceedingly great” in this verse is holekh ve-gadel ad-lema‘lah. The Hebrew phrase carries the sense of “going and growing,” so greatness appears as movement rather than a fixed rank. The related מִגְדָּל (migdal, tower) carries that same root into height and built prominence.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: great, large
גָּדוֹל
It shares the root with the verse’s growing greatness, keeping the idea of increase in view.
migdal: tower
מִגְדָּל
It shows this root extending from becoming great to a structure that rises high.
וַיִּבֶן
vayiven
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
build, establish
“built” in this verse is vayiven. The verse gives growth a material form: strongholds and cities of store. This building-root also forms words for structures and construction, linking increase with what can hold and preserve.
ALSO GROWS
mivneh: structure, form
מִבְנֶה
It makes visible the verse’s movement from growth to something built and lasting.
binyan: building, construction
בִּנְיָן
It keeps the root’s emphasis on giving growth a durable shape.
THE PATTERN
Growth becomes durable when it takes form in structures that hold what matters.
And he gathered all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and placed the food in the cities; the food of the field, which was around every city, he placed within it.In whom the whole building, joined at the joints, grows into a set-apart temple in the Lord.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders toil in emptiness. Unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman stays awake in emptiness.“Build” in this verse and Psalm 127:1 comes from the same Hebrew root, בנה (banah, build). The psalm opens building onto a deeper question: what makes the structure endure?
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