What Does 2 Chronicles 20:11 Mean?
Behold, how they repay us by coming to drive us out of your possession, which you gave us to inherit.
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
Behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of thy possession, which thou hast given us to inherit.THE KEY
The same Hebrew root names both the possession given and the act of inheriting it, so a threat can target what is yours without becoming the source that made it yours.
THE MEANING
Your place can be under real pressure without the pressure becoming the source of your belonging. The verse names what is at stake as something given, then names expulsion as another party’s act. Its repeated inheritance-root keeps receiving and possessing joined even as the near-sounding word for expulsion presses against it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if someone can force you out, that proves the place was never given to you.
THE ROOT
יְרֻשָּׁתְךָ
yerushatkha
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
y-r-sh
Take possession, inherit; in causative forms, give possession or dispossess.
“possession / inherit” in this verse is yerushatkha. English makes “possession” and “inherit” look like separate ideas, but both come from ירשׁ. The verse names the land as God’s possession and says God caused the people to possess it, keeping the gift and its holding in one root.
ALSO GROWS
yerushah: Inheritance, possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun names the land as something held through the giver’s act.
yarash: To inherit or take possession; also, in some contexts, to dispossess.
יָרַשׁ
The root can name both acquiring a possession and removing another from it, revealing the conflict over who holds the ground.
לְגָרְשֵׁנוּ
legarshenu
GROWS FROM
גרשׁ
g-r-sh
Drive out, expel, send away.
“drive us out” in this verse is legarshenu. גרשׁ is a distinct root from ירשׁ, but it shares its final two consonants, resh-shin. That near echo sharpens the clash between inheritance and expulsion: the threat presses against the very ground named as a gift.
ALSO GROWS
garash: To drive out or expel.
גָּרַשׁ
This verb names the force being attempted against the inherited possession.
gerushah: A woman put away or divorced.
גְּרוּשָׁה
The same root can describe being sent away from a bond as well as from a place, giving expulsion a sense of severance.
גֹּמְלִים
gomlim
GROWS FROM
גמל
g-m-l
Deal with, repay, or recompense.
“Reward” frames the attack as a returned act, not merely a new pressure. The surrounding verse recalls prior restraint, giving this word the sting of restraint answered with expulsion.
ALSO GROWS
gamal: To deal with or repay.
גָּמַל
The verb behind “they reward us” casts the action as a response returned upon someone.
gemul: Recompense or what is done in return.
גְּמוּל
This noun keeps the idea of repayment audible beneath the verse’s accusation.
THE PATTERN
Inheritance is named as a received share whose source precedes any present struggle over possession.
See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take hold of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them and to their seed after them.Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us sufficient to have a share in the inheritance of the set-apart ones in the light.THE THREAD
But the bowed ones will inherit the land, and they will soften themselves in the abundance of wholeness.The word translated “inherit” comes from ירשׁ (yarash), the same root behind “possession” and “inherit” here. The Psalm opens the threatened ground outward to the earth, where inheritors delight in wholeness.
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