What Does 2 Chronicles 17:6 Mean?
And his heart rose high in the ways of the LORD, and moreover he turned away the high places and the Asherah poles out of Judah.
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 his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD: moreover he took away the high places and groves out of Judah.THE KEY
The heart rises in the LORD’s way while the high places come down: inward elevation and outward clearing stand together.
THE MEANING
When your heart rises in the LORD’s ways, that movement reaches into the landscape around you: the verse places it beside the removal of high places and groves. Inner direction and what remains standing outside are held together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inward devotion can remain untouched by competing altars: here, the heart raised in the LORD’s ways stands beside the removal of high places and groves.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגְבַּהּ
wayyigbah
GROWS FROM
גבה
Rise, be high.
“rose high” in this verse is wayyigbah. Hebrew uses וַיִּגְבַּהּ (wayyigbah, rose or was lifted) for the heart, but בָּמוֹת (bāmôt, high places) for the shrines; these are distinct words and roots despite their shared English image. The verse sets the heart’s upward movement alongside the removal of raised worship sites, so the contrast is in the scene rather than a shared etymology.
ALSO GROWS
gābōah: High, lofty.
גָּבֹהַּ
This branch carries the same upward quality the verse applies to the heart.
gōbah: Height, loftiness.
גֹּבַהּ
It gives a noun for being high, while the verse locates that height in the heart’s direction.
דַּרְכֵי
darkhei
GROWS FROM
דרך
Tread, take steps along a path.
The word translated “ways” belongs to the root of דָּרַךְ (dārak, to tread): a way is a path made real by walking it. The heart’s rise is tied to a lived direction, and the clearing around it makes that direction visible.
ALSO GROWS
derek: Way, path, road.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the singular form behind the verse’s “ways,” giving the LORD’s way the shape of a path.
dārak: Tread, step, walk.
דָּרַךְ
The verb reveals that a way is not merely an idea; it is what the feet repeatedly tread.
THE PATTERN
The heart’s direction becomes visible in what it treasures, preserves, and casts down.
He removed the high places, broke the standing stones, cut down the Asherah poles, and broke to pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the children of Israel made smoke rise to it. And he called it Nehushtan, the bronze thing.For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Pulling down reckonings, and every height lifted up against the knowing of God, and leading every thought captive to the hearing and response of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
I run the way of your commands, when you widen my heart.Both verses pair the heart with the LORD’s way, using דֶּרֶךְ (derek, way or path), from דָּרַךְ (dārak, to tread). Psalm 119:32 adds an enlarged heart, showing the way as a path walked with an inner spaciousness.
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