What Does 2 Chronicles 18:26 Mean?
And say, Thus says the king, Put this man in the prison, and feed him bread of pressing and water of pressing, until I return in wholeness.
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 say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in the prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until I return in peace.THE KEY
The king names his own return as peace while ordering pressure into another person’s daily bread and water.
THE MEANING
When a word threatens authority, power can shrink the speaker’s world to a cell and a ration of distress. The ruler’s anticipated wholeness stands beside another person’s imposed pressure, revealing a peace named from one side while suffering is borne on the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a ruler’s claim to peace means peace is shared: his return may be called wholeness while another person is kept under pressure.
THE ROOT
לַחַץ
laḥaṣ
GROWS FROM
לחץ
To press or squeeze, and thus to oppress.
“pressing” in this verse is laḥaṣ. The word translated “affliction” carries the sense of pressure: distress as something imposed upon a person. Here that pressure is made into the captive’s daily food and water.
ALSO GROWS
laḥaṣ: Pressure, oppression, distress.
לַחַץ
This noun names the pressure in the bread and water the king orders.
laḥats: To press, oppress, or force into distress.
לָחַץ
The verb makes the image active: affliction is pressure exerted on someone.
כֶּלֶא
keleʾ
GROWS FROM
כלא
To restrain, shut in, or hold back.
The prison’s name is tied to the act of holding someone in. Alongside the pressure of the ration, confinement describes both the closed space and the restriction imposed on the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
kālāʾ: To restrain, shut in, or withhold.
כָּלָא
The verb exposes the action behind the prison: the speaker is held back from freedom.
keleʾ: Prison, confinement.
כֶּלֶא
This noun names the place of restraint ordered in the verse.
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be complete or whole, and to make whole.
The king’s promised peace is shalom, wholeness. The verse places that claim beside another person’s imposed pressure, leaving the reader to see whose wholeness the ruler names.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the king’s promised return carry the sense of completeness.
shillem: To repay or recompense.
שִׁלֵּם
The same root family can speak of repayment, sharpening the contrast between the ruler’s claim of wholeness and the captive’s imposed cost.
THE PATTERN
When a message threatens power, authority can answer by narrowing the messenger’s freedom instead of receiving the message.
Then Pashur struck Jeremiah the prophet, and set him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD.But prophesy no more at Bethel, for it is the set-apart place of the king, and the house of his governance.And when they had laid many blows upon them, they threw them into prison, charging the keeper of the bonds to keep them securely.THE THREAD
Now therefore, look, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the pressing with which the Egyptians press upon them.The word translated “affliction” here is לַחַץ (laḥaṣ), pressure or oppression, from the same root as the oppression named in Exodus. That shared root places the king’s imposed distress within scripture’s language of people being pressed down.
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