What Does 2 Chronicles 30:6 Mean?
So the runners went with letters from the hand of the king and his princes through all Israel and Judah, and according to the command of the king, saying, You children of Israel, turn back to the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will turn back to those of you who were left, to those who slipped free from the palm of the kings of Assyria.
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 the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, Ye children of Israel, turn again unto the LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you, that are escaped out of the hand of the kings of Assyria.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb makes return reciprocal: the survivors turn toward the LORD, and the LORD turns toward the survivors.
THE MEANING
A call to turn toward God meets a promise that God turns toward the remnant. The invitation reaches the person who has survived another power’s grip; survival does not place them beyond the reach of return.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that surviving domination leaves a person forgotten or disqualified: the escaped remnant is named in the invitation and in God’s promised return.
THE ROOT
שׁוּבוּ
shuvu
GROWS FROM
שׁוב
To turn back or return.
“turn back” in this verse is shuvu. The call to turn and the promise that the LORD will return use the same root. Hebrew makes the movement reciprocal: the remnant turns toward God, and God turns toward the remnant.
ALSO GROWS
shuvu: Turn back, return; plural command.
שׁוּבוּ
This is the call addressed to the people: turn toward the LORD.
yashov: He will return, come back.
יָשֹׁב
The same root describes the LORD’s promised movement toward the remnant.
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This related noun keeps the idea of return visible as a turning, the movement named in the verse.
הַפְּלֵיטָה
ha-peletah
GROWS FROM
פלט
To slip away, escape, survive.
“slipped free” in this verse is ha-peletah. The word for remnant grows from the root for escape. Those addressed are survivors who have slipped beyond the Assyrian kings’ hand; their survival is part of the sentence’s meaning.
ALSO GROWS
palit: Fugitive, survivor.
פָּלִיט
It names a person who has escaped, like those the verse describes as remaining after the kings’ grasp.
pelitim: Fugitives, survivors.
פְּלֵיטִים
The plural branch makes the escaped remnant a group of surviving people.
ha-peletah: The escaped ones, the remnant.
הַפְּלֵיטָה
This is the word used for the remnant to whom the LORD will return.
יִצְחָק
Yitzchak
GROWS FROM
צחק
To laugh.
Yitzchak carries laughter into the invocation of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. That name sits beside the verse’s unsoftened account of people escaping the Assyrian kings’ power.
ALSO GROWS
tsechoq: Laughter.
צְחוֹק
This noun makes audible the laughter held in Isaac’s name.
metsacheq: Laughing, playing.
מְצַחֵק
This verbal branch carries the same root of laughter as Yitzchak.
THE PATTERN
Scripture repeatedly frames return as reciprocal movement: the one who turns toward God is met by God’s movement toward them.
Therefore say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, Turn to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts.And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes, and you have not guarded them. Turn back to me, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, How shall we turn back?Malachi uses the same Hebrew root for the people’s return and the LORD’s return, just as 2 Chronicles does. The repeated root lets you hear the reciprocity inside both invitations.
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