What Does 2 Chronicles 35:25 Mean?
And Jeremiah wailed over Josiah, and all the singers, men and women, spoke of Josiah in their laments to this day. They gave them in Israel as a statute, and behold, they are written in the laments.
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 Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one lament-root for Jeremiah’s act and the people’s dirges, showing grief move from one voice into shared memory that lasts.
THE MEANING
Your grief over a life that has changed your world can become shared speech, carried beyond the moment by those who remember. Here mourning is voiced by a community, given a lasting place in its practice, and preserved in writing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that grief must be private or brief: here it is shared across a community and carried forward “to this day.”
THE ROOT
וַיְקוֹנֵן
wayqōnēn
GROWS FROM
קונ
q-w-n
To chant a dirge or lament.
“wailed” in this verse is wayqōnēn. The same root names Jeremiah’s act and the people’s lamentations, joining personal grief to communal song. The lament remains part of the people’s speech “to this day.”
ALSO GROWS
qinah: A lament or dirge.
קִינָה
This noun names the kind of mourning the people share in the verse.
meqonen: One who chants a lament; a mourner.
מְקוֹנֵן
It shows lament as a voiced practice that others can carry together.
חֹק
ḥoq
GROWS FROM
חקק
ḥ-q-q
To inscribe or prescribe; to establish by decree.
“statute” in this verse is ḥoq. The word for ordinance belongs to a root associated with marking out or prescribing. The lament is given a fixed place in Israel’s shared life, rather than left as a passing expression.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaqaq: To inscribe, decree, or prescribe.
חָקַק
This verb’s sense of marking something out illuminates how the lament becomes an established practice.
mechoqeq: A lawgiver or one who decrees.
מְחֹקֵק
This related word connects the root with what is formally established.
כְּתוּבִים
ketuvim
GROWS FROM
כתב
k-t-b
To write or record.
The verse holds spoken lament and written record together. The grief is not only voiced in the present; it is also preserved for those who come later.
ALSO GROWS
ketav: Writing or script.
כְּתָב
It shows how spoken remembrance can take durable written form.
miktav: A written message or letter.
מִכְתָּב
It carries the root’s sense of preserving words beyond the moment they are spoken.
THE PATTERN
Communities carry loss by giving grief a shared voice.
And David wailed this lament over Saul, and over Jonathan his son.Thus says the LORD of hosts, Discern, and call for the wailing women, that they may come, and send for the wise women, that they may come.And reverent men carried Stephen to his burial, and beat their breasts over him in great mourning.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Discern, and call for the wailing women, that they may come, and send for the wise women, that they may come.The Hebrew word-family behind “lamented” and “lamentations” here also appears in Jeremiah’s call for mourning women. The echo reveals lament as a shared language a people can carry, not only an individual’s outpouring.
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