What Does 2 Chronicles 30:13 Mean?
And a great people gathered in Jerusalem to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great assembly.
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
And there assembled at Jerusalem much people to keep the feast of unleavened bread in the second month, a very great congregation.THE KEY
The people gather into an assembly at Yerushalayim, a name that carries the sound of shalom, the wholeness that can hold a multitude.
THE MEANING
Many people gather around a shared observance and become a congregation, not merely a crowd. Their gathering has a common center, and the verse places that many-ness within the resonance of wholeness.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
ש־ל־ם
sh-l-m
wholeness, completeness
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries the sound of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness) in a dual form: two wholenesses. The multitude gathers at a name that holds the horizon of wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
It reveals the resonance carried by Jerusalem’s name in this verse.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It makes the name’s wholeness concrete: the gathering is held within a place-name of completeness.
וַיִּקָּבְצוּ
wayyiqqavetsu
GROWS FROM
ק־ב־ץ
q-b-ts
gather, collect
This word carries the movement by which people are gathered into one place. Beside qahal, it lets the verse show both the gathering and the assembly it forms.
ALSO GROWS
qibbēts: gathered, collected
קִבֵּץ
It keeps the act of collecting people audible beneath the completed gathering.
qibbuts: a gathering, collection
קִבּוּץ
It names the collected group that emerges from the movement expressed in the verse.
קָהָל
qahal
GROWS FROM
ק־ה־ל
q-h-l
assemble, gather as a community
Qahal gives the multitude the form of an assembly. The verse holds movement and shared presence together: people are gathered, and their gathered life is a congregation.
ALSO GROWS
haqhel: assemble or gather the people
הַקְהֵל
This verb form shows the same root as an act that brings people into a shared gathering.
qehillah: community, congregation
קְהִלָּה
It carries qahal’s assembly into the sense of a people gathered as a community.
THE PATTERN
A shared sacred observance gives a gathering of many people a common center and shape.
On the first day there will be a set-apart gathering, and on the seventh day there will be a set-apart gathering for you; no work will be done in them, except what every living soul must eat. Only that may be done by you.When the day of Pentecost was fully filled, they were all together in one place.Not leaving behind the gathering of ourselves, as is the habit of some, but urging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.THE THREAD
And he will lift a banner for the nations, and gather in the driven ones of Israel, and gather the scattered of Judah from the four wings of the earth.The Hebrew וַיִּקָּבְצוּ (wayyiqqavetsu, “they gathered”) here and יְקַבֵּץ (yəqabbēts, “gather together”) in Isaiah share the root קבץ (qavats, “gather, collect”). Isaiah makes the movement visible: people dispersed across the earth are gathered into a shared assembly.
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