What Does 2 Chronicles 29:22 Mean?
So they slaughtered the bulls, and the priests took the blood and scattered it on the altar. Likewise, when they had slaughtered the rams, they scattered the blood on the altar. They slaughtered the lambs also, and they scattered the blood on the altar.
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
So they killed the bullocks, and the priests received the blood, and sprinkled it on the altar: likewise, when they had killed the rams, they sprinkled the blood upon the altar: they killed also the lambs, and they sprinkled the blood upon the altar.THE KEY
The verse’s repeated “sprinkling” carries the sense of casting: the blood moves from each slain animal through the priests to the altar.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the whole sequence in view: each animal is killed, the priests receive its blood, and they cast it onto the altar. The repeated movement makes the altar the blood’s destination; the action shown does not end with the slaughter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The rite is only the animal’s death. The verse continues: its blood is received and deliberately placed on the altar.
THE ROOT
זָרַק
zāraq
GROWS FROM
זרק
z-r-q
to throw, cast, or sprinkle
“scattered” in this verse is zāraq. Beneath “sprinkled” is the sense of casting or throwing, making the blood’s movement a directed placement. The same root links the action to a vessel used for sprinkling, bringing the handling of blood into the word’s wider family.
ALSO GROWS
zāraq: to throw or cast; also to sprinkle
זָרַק
This is the verb behind the priests’ act, carrying the sense of a directed movement onto the altar.
mizraq: a basin or bowl used for sprinkling
מִזְרָק
This vessel word shares the root, linking the act of casting blood with the bowl used to handle it.
THE PATTERN
Blood is carried from its source and deliberately placed on an altar or covenant community.
He takes some of the blood of the bullock and sprinkles it with his finger upon the covering eastward, and before the covering he sprinkles some of the blood with his finger seven times.And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.For when every command had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the instruction, he took the blood of calves and goats with water, crimson wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the scroll itself and all the people.THE THREAD
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.The Hebrew verb זָרַק (zāraq, “cast” or “sprinkle”) appears in both verses. Here the blood is cast onto the altar; in Exodus it is cast onto the people as the covenant is named, revealing the same action marking two different destinations.
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