What Does 2 Chronicles 33:6 Mean?
And he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and he read the clouds, and read omens, and muttered spells, and dealt with the ones who speak out of the ground and with the ones who know. He did much evil in the eyes of the LORD, to stir his anger.
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 he caused his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom: also he observed times, and used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards: he wrought much evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.THE KEY
The verse refuses to separate the pursuit of hidden knowledge from the same hand sending children through fire.
THE MEANING
The verse places the search for omens, enchantments, and the dead beside the sending of children through fire, then names this course as evil in the LORD’s sight. It speaks now by exposing how the pursuit of hidden power can occupy the same life as violence against the vulnerable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that seeking hidden knowledge is harmless by itself: here, it stands beside the direct harm of children.
THE ROOT
וְהֶעֱבִיר
veheʿĕvīr
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿāvar
Cross, pass over, go through. Here the verb is causative: he makes the children pass through the fire.
“caused ... to pass through” in this verse is veheʿĕvīr. The grammar keeps responsibility with the one directing the act; the children are its objects, not its agents. This root also forms words for what lies beyond and for transgression, holding physical crossing and boundary violation in one linguistic family.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēver: The region across or beyond.
עֵבֶר
This branch keeps the concrete motion of crossing audible in the verse’s verb.
ʿăvērāh: A violation or transgression.
עֲבֵרָה
The same root also names crossing a boundary as an offense, sharpening the force of this directed act.
וְעוֹנֵן
veʿōnēn
GROWS FROM
ענן
ʿānan
The biblical verb means to practice divination or read omens; its proposed relation to the word for cloud is uncertain.
“read the clouds” in this verse is veʿōnēn. English “observed times” can sound like watching a calendar, while the Hebrew names divination or omen-reading. The same consonants appear in the word for cloud, sometimes linked to reading signs in clouds, though that connection is debated.
ALSO GROWS
ʿānān: A cloud or cloud-cover.
עָנָן
This shared form suggests a possible link between omen-reading and signs in the sky, while the precise derivation remains uncertain.
meʿōnēn: One who practices divination or reads omens.
מְעוֹנֵן
This related form makes clear that the verse names a practice of seeking signs, rather than merely observing the passage of time.
THE PATTERN
The pursuit of hidden power and the treatment of vulnerable lives belong in the same moral account.
No one is found among you who makes his son or his daughter cross through the fire, who divines divinations, who reads clouds, who hisses, or who works spells.And say to the children of Israel, whoever of the children of Israel, or of the sojourners who sojourn in Israel, gives any of his seed to Molech, shall surely die. The people of the land shall stone him with stones.And when they say to you, Seek to those who have familiar spirits, and to the knowers who chirp and moan, should not a people seek to their God? For the living, to the dead?THE THREAD
No one is found among you who makes his son or his daughter cross through the fire, who divines divinations, who reads clouds, who hisses, or who works spells.The same causative verb for making a child pass through fire appears in both verses. Deuteronomy places that violence beside divination in a single list, opening the current verse’s practices as one account rather than unrelated details.
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