What Does 2 Chronicles 26:10 Mean?
Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells, for he had much cattle, both in the lowland and on the level ground; tillers of the soil also, and tenders of the vine in the mountains, and in Carmel; for he loved the ground.
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
Also he built towers in the desert, and digged many wells: for he had much cattle, both in the low country, and in the plains: husbandmen also, and vine dressers in the mountains, and in Carmel: for he loved husbandry.THE KEY
The closing phrase literally says he was a lover of the ground: the towers and wells serve that love, rather than define it.
THE MEANING
This verse names flourishing as a relationship with the ground: dry places hold life when care reaches beneath the surface for water and gives the soil sustained attention. What the KJV calls “husbandry” begins in Hebrew as love of the soil.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that abundance begins with accumulation: here, it begins with care for the ground and the water hidden within it.
THE ROOT
אֲדָמָה
ʾădāmāh
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
The consonantal family links the ground and the human, and is associated with redness.
“the ground” in this verse is ʾădāmāh. The verse says he was a lover of adamah, the soil itself. The Hebrew word sits in the same consonantal family as adam, “human,” holding the cultivated ground and the earth-formed person close together.
ALSO GROWS
ʾādām: human, earth-being
אָדָם
The human and the soil share a consonantal family, so care for the ground touches the source from which human life is formed.
ʾādōm: red
אָדֹם
The root family also carries the color red, often associated with the coloring of soil, linking the human and the ground through their shared name-family.
THE PATTERN
Flourishing takes root when care reaches the material conditions of life: soil, water, and the work that joins them.
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.You visit the earth and give it drink; you enrich it greatly. The channels of God are full of waters. You set their grain firm, for so you have set it.I planted, Apollos gave to drink, but God made it grow.THE THREAD
And the LORD God shaped the ground-being, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul.Genesis names the ground as adamah, the same word at the heart of this verse. The soil Uzziah loves and cultivates is also the ground from which the human is formed.
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