What Does 2 Chronicles 33:9 Mean?
So Manasseh caused Judah and the settlers of Jerusalem to stray, and to do more evil than the nations, whom the LORD wiped out before the children of Israel.
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 Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel.THE KEY
The verb behind “made ... to err” means “caused to wander”: the verse shows how one person’s influence can turn a whole people off course.
THE MEANING
Influence can make an entire people wander together, and that shared course can deepen into greater harm. The verse speaks to communities now: belonging or identity does not keep a people from doing worse than those they judge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It overturns the belief that belonging to the right community shields its people from deeper wrongdoing; a whole community can be led into it.
THE ROOT
וַיַּתְעֵם
wayyatʿēm
GROWS FROM
תעה
to wander, go astray, or lose one’s way
“to stray” in this verse is wayyatʿēm. The root holds error and wandering together. Here its causative form places the force of that wandering in Manasseh’s influence: a whole people is moved off course together.
ALSO GROWS
taʿah: to wander; go astray
תָּעָה
This is the root’s basic sense, showing that the people’s error is pictured as losing their way.
hitʿah: to lead astray; cause to wander
הִתְעָה
This causative form makes clear that the verse describes someone directing others into that lost way.
מְנַשֶּׁה
Menasheh
GROWS FROM
נשה
to forget; to make forget
Manasseh’s name is linked with forgetting, a connection made explicit when Joseph explains his son’s name in Genesis 41:51. Beside the verb for causing a people to wander, the name places forgetting beside lost direction.
ALSO GROWS
nashah: to forget
נָשָׁה
This root gives the name its association with forgetting.
nashani: he has made me forget
נַשַּׁנִי
In Genesis 41:51, Joseph uses this form as he explains the name Manasseh.
THE PATTERN
A leader’s direction can carry a whole people into deeper harm.
For the straighteners of this people make them wander, and those led by them are swallowed up.Let them go. They are blind guides of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.THE THREAD
All of us like sheep have wandered; each has turned to his own way, and the LORD has caused the crookedness of us all to fall upon him.Isaiah uses the same root, תעה (taʿah), for “gone astray.” There the people describe their own wandering; here the causative form shows how a leader can set that wandering in motion.
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