What Does 2 Chronicles 35:1 Mean?
And Josiah made a Passover to the LORD in Jerusalem, and they slaughtered the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.
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
Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the LORD in Jerusalem: and they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.THE KEY
The word for Passover names the act of sparing, yet here that passage is embodied in an offering that is killed.
THE MEANING
Deliverance here is a shared, tangible reality: it is kept before the LORD in Jerusalem and embodied in a slaughtered Passover offering on a fixed day. At the beginning of the year, memory takes shape through a place, a body, and a marked time.
THE ROOT
פֶּסַח
pesach
GROWS FROM
פסח
p-s-ḥ
To pass over or spare.
The name of the rite is bound to the act of sparing: Passover carries deliverance in its very name. Here that deliverance is not abstract; the Passover is both kept and slaughtered.
ALSO GROWS
pasach: To pass over or spare.
פָּסַח
In Exodus 12:13, this verb describes the LORD passing over the marked houses, showing the action held within the name.
pesach: The Passover rite and offering.
פֶּסַח
The same root names both the act of sparing and the offering slaughtered in this verse.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
Wholeness, completeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness) in its name and ends in the dual form -ayim: the two wholenesses. The Passover is kept in a place whose name holds wholeness as its horizon.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being, peace.
שָׁלוֹם
This branch brings the name’s sense of wholeness into the place where the Passover is kept.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
The shared root links the city’s name to completeness, giving the setting a meaning beyond geography.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance becomes shared memory through a marked, embodied act repeated in time.
And this day will be for you a remembrance. You will keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations, a statute for the ages.Guard the month of Abib, and make the Passover to the LORD your God, for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night.And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
And the blood will be a mark for you upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will leap over you, and the blow will not be upon you to ruin you when I strike down the land of Egypt.The verb פָּסַח (pasach, pass over or spare) is the root behind פֶּסַח (pesach, Passover), the rite named and slaughtered in the present verse. Exodus shows the name’s movement directly: the marked houses are spared as destruction passes over them.
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