What Does 2 Chronicles 5:3 Mean?
So all the men of Israel gathered themselves to the king at the feast in the seventh 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
Wherefore all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto the king in the feast which was in the seventh month.THE KEY
The feast’s hidden center is convergence: Israel’s men become one assembly by gathering toward the king at the appointed time.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now whenever a shared occasion draws people together: belonging takes visible form in the act of gathering. The feast is not only something they attend; it is also the moment their assembly becomes present around a shared center.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקָּהֲלוּ
wayyiqqāhālû
GROWS FROM
קהל
To assemble or gather as a congregation.
“gathered themselves” in this verse is wayyiqqāhālû. The root names both the act of gathering and the assembly that takes shape through it. The men are not merely arriving at a feast; their convergence makes them a gathered people.
ALSO GROWS
qāhāl: Assembly, congregation.
קָהָל
The noun names the gathered community formed by the action in this verse.
haqhel: Assemble; gather together.
הַקְהֵל
The same root appears in a command to gather men, women, children, and the stranger, showing how a qahal is brought together.
חַג
ḥag
GROWS FROM
חגג
To celebrate or keep a festival.
The feast is linked to the act of keeping a festival, so it carries the sense of an observed occasion, not just a date. Here that occasion gives the gathering its shared time and shape.
ALSO GROWS
ḥag: Feast, festival.
חַג
This is the word used in the verse for the occasion that draws the people together.
ḥāgag: Celebrate a festival; keep a feast.
חָגַג
The verb makes clear that the feast is something the people enact together, not merely a time on the calendar.
THE PATTERN
People become a visible community when they gather in shared time and place.
Three times in a year all your males shall be seen before the face of the LORD your God in the place he will choose, at the feast of unsoured bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths. They shall not be seen before the face of the LORD empty.When the day of Pentecost was fully filled, they were all together in one place.Not leaving behind the gathering of ourselves, as is the habit of some, but urging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.THE THREAD
Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the little ones, and the sojourner within your gates, so that they may hear and respond, and so that they may learn, and be struck with awe of the LORD your God, and guard to do all the words of this instruction;The word “Gather” comes from the same root קהל (qahal) as “assembled” here. Deuteronomy names men, women, children, and the stranger as part of the gathering, showing the assembly as a whole people convened together.
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