What Does 2 Chronicles 20:7 Mean?
Are you not our God, who drove out those who settled this land before your people Israel, and gave it to the seed of Abraham, your beloved, for the ages?
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
Art not thou our God, who didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel, and gavest it to the seed of Abraham thy friend for ever?THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “drive out” also means “inherit,” so the verse describes one transfer of possession: the inhabitants are dispossessed and Abraham’s seed receives the land.
THE MEANING
As you read now, the verse holds gift and dispossession together: God gives the land to Abraham’s seed after driving out its inhabitants. The promise extends beyond Abraham’s lifetime, and Abraham is named as one who loves God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that a promised inheritance arrives without displacing anyone: here, the inhabitants are driven out before the land is given.
THE ROOT
הוֹרַשְׁתָּ
horashta
GROWS FROM
ירש
y-r-sh
To take possession or inherit; in the form used here, to dispossess.
“drove out” in this verse is horashta. English gives you two separate actions: driving out and inheriting. Hebrew uses a form of one root for both, holding the dispossession and the new possession together. The transfer remains visible in the word itself.
ALSO GROWS
yarash: To inherit, take possession, or dispossess, depending on the form.
יָרַשׁ
This is the root behind both the removal of the inhabitants and the inheritance that follows.
morashah: Possession or inheritance.
מוֹרָשָׁה
This noun shows the root’s other side: what is possessed or passed on after the transfer.
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow or scatter seed.
Hebrew uses one word for planted seed and descendants. The land is given here not only to Abraham, but to the continuation that grows from him.
ALSO GROWS
zaraʿ: To sow or plant seed.
זָרַע
The verb keeps the image of descendants rooted in something planted and growing.
zeraʿ: Seed or offspring.
זֶרַע
Here the word names Abraham’s descendants as the recipients of the inheritance.
אֹהַבְךָ
ohevcha
GROWS FROM
אהב
ʾ-h-b
To love.
“beloved” in this verse is ohevcha. The Hebrew phrase describes Abraham as one who loves God, making affection explicit within the word translated “friend.” The relationship is named through love, not only through a social title.
ALSO GROWS
ahavah: Love.
אַהֲבָה
This noun makes explicit the quality carried by the description of Abraham.
ahuv: Beloved or loved one.
אָהוּב
This related form shows how the root also describes a person through the bond of love.
THE PATTERN
Scripture frames Abraham’s inheritance as a gift that passes through a promised line and outlasts one lifetime.
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.Saying, "To you I will give the land of Canaan, the measuring cord of your inheritance."For the promise that he would be heir of the world did not come to Abraham or to his seed through instruction, but through the alignment of trust.THE THREAD
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.The same root, יָרַשׁ (yarash, “inherit or take possession; dispossess”), appears as “drive out” here and “inherit it” in Genesis. Genesis speaks of the same transfer as Abraham’s own grant: being brought out and receiving the land belong to one promise.
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