What Does 2 Chronicles 20:23 Mean?
For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the settlers of mount Seir, to have them devoted to destruction and to destroy them. When they had finished with the settlers of Seir, each one helped to destroy another.
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
For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.THE KEY
The same verb for “help” describes the alliance’s final act: it helps its members destroy one another.
THE MEANING
The verse shows violence turning inward: the helpers become one another’s destroyers. Its force does not end with its first target; the alliance carries it into itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a shared target makes an alliance safe from its own violence.
THE ROOT
עָזְרוּ
ʿāzərû from ʿāzar
GROWS FROM
עזר
to help, aid, or support
“helped” in this verse is ʿāzərû from ʿāzar. The verse uses the ordinary language of aid for an act that serves destruction. The root leaves the direction of help open; the phrase shows what that help is serving.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: help or aid
עֵזֶר
The noun makes the shared root visible: help can name the act of support, while this verse exposes its destructive aim.
ʿōzēr: helper; one who gives aid
עֹזֵר
The agents remain helpers even as they turn against their allies, making the role itself part of the verse’s unsettling reversal.
לְמַשְׁחִית
le-mashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
to ruin, spoil, or corrupt
The word translated “destroy” carries the same root that can describe corruption and ruin. The verse’s ending points to a condition of wreckage, not only the act of killing.
ALSO GROWS
nishchat: corrupted or ruined
נִשְׁחָת
This form shares the root behind “corrupt” in Genesis 6:11, linking destruction with a state of ruin.
mashchit: destroying; bringing ruin
מַשְׁחִית
This form appears in the verse’s final description, as the destruction turns from Seir toward the allies themselves.
THE PATTERN
Violence gathered against others can turn inward and consume those who wield it.
And the three hundred blew the horns, and the LORD set every man's sword against his companion, throughout all the camp; and the camp fled to Bethshittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abelmeholah, to Tabbath.His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.But if you bite and devour one another, watch that you are not used up by one another.THE THREAD
The earth also was ruined before God, and the earth was filled with violence.The word translated “destroy” here comes from שחת (shāḥat, “to ruin or corrupt”), the same root behind “corrupt” in Genesis 6:11. Hebrew lets the two verses connect corruption with ruin: what is corrupted is already being brought to destruction.
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