What Does 2 Chronicles 29:9 Mean?
For, behold, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are taken captive for this.
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, lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword, and our sons and our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this.THE KEY
The sword’s violence continues in captivity, reaching the people still alive.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever violence divides a family between those killed and those carried away: it names both losses. Its words “for this” keep the captivity connected to the violence that brought it about.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that violence ends when the sword falls dissolves here: the people left alive can still be held captive.
THE ROOT
שְׁבִי
shevi
GROWS FROM
שבה
sh-b-h
To take captive, to carry away.
“taken captive” in this verse is shevi. The word for captivity grows from a verb for taking someone captive: it names a condition produced by an act. That root keeps the people in captivity connected to the violence named just before it.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: To take captive, to carry away.
שָׁבָה
This verb shows the action held inside the noun: captivity is the state of being taken.
shavuy: A captive; someone carried away.
שָׁבוּי
This form names the person inside the condition, bringing the verse’s focus back to the sons, daughters, and wives.
THE PATTERN
Violence continues beyond those killed when the people left alive are carried away.
You shall bear sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity.Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away, whom I have carried from Jerusalem to Babylon.They will fall by the mouth of the sword, and be led away captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the nations until the seasons of the nations are filled.THE THREAD
But thus says the LORD, Even the captives of the mighty will be taken away, and the plunder of the terrifying one will slip free. For I will contend with the one who contends with you, and I will deliver your children.Isaiah uses the same שְׁבִי (shevi, captivity) root, placing captives within a promise that their captor’s hold can be broken. It opens the naming of captivity here toward release without denying the harm.
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