What Does 2 Chronicles 6:21 Mean?
Hear and respond therefore to the pleadings of your servant, and of your people Israel, which they shall pray toward this place. Hear and respond from your sitting place, from the heavens, and when you have heard, release.
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
Hearken therefore unto the supplications of thy servant, and of thy people Israel, which they shall make toward this place: hear thou from thy dwelling place, even from heaven; and when thou hearest, forgive.THE KEY
Here, hearing itself opens into release: God hears, and God forgives.
THE MEANING
Your plea is not outside God’s hearing, even when it is directed toward a place: the dwelling in heaven is named as the source of response. The verse gathers the servant and the people before the same listener. Hearing culminates in release: the response to what is brought before God is forgiveness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once an offense is heard, it must remain held against the one who brought it: here, hearing ends in pardon.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁמַעְתָּ
veshamata tishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, heed; here, hearing that responds.
“hear and respond” in this verse is veshamata tishma. The verse repeats שמע across the plea, the hearing from heaven, and the closing response. English changes “hearken,” “hear,” and “hearest,” while Hebrew keeps one root at the center: hearing is attentive response, not merely sound arriving.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; listen.
שְׁמַע
This imperative carries the same root into a direct call to hear, echoing the verse’s repeated appeal.
shemuah: Report, news; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun shows how hearing becomes what is known, matching the plea that is heard and answered.
וְסָלָחְתָּ
vesalachta
GROWS FROM
סלח
Forgive, pardon.
The verse does not leave hearing as distant awareness; it names pardon as what follows. Forgiveness as release means what has been brought into the open need not remain held against the petitioner.
ALSO GROWS
selichah: Forgiveness, pardon.
סְלִיחָה
This noun from the same root names the release that the verse places after hearing.
nislach: Be forgiven.
נִסְלַח
This form presents pardon as a received state, illuminating the verse’s movement from appeal to release.
תְּחִנָּה
techinnah
GROWS FROM
חנן
Show favor, be gracious.
“pleadings” in this verse is techinnah. The Hebrew noun for supplication grows from the language of favor: the plea is an appeal for gracious regard. That request sits beside the closing pardon, where what stands against the people is released.
ALSO GROWS
chen: Favor.
חֵן
The shared root reveals favor beneath the supplication: the plea asks to be received with gracious regard.
channun: Gracious, showing favor.
חַנּוּן
This related word describes the quality being appealed to in the supplication.
THE PATTERN
A plea directed toward God is met by hearing that issues in pardon and release.
O you who hear and respond to prayer, to you all flesh comes.Let the wicked leave his way, and the man of crookedness his plans. Let him turn back to the LORD, and he will have compassion on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly release.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
Release, I beg you, the crookedness of this people, as great as your faithful love, and as you have lifted this people from Egypt until now.The plea begins with סְלַח־נָא (salach-na), “pardon, please,” from the same root סלח (salach) as “forgive” here. Moses’ appeal also places pardon after a voiced plea, so the final “hear and forgive” becomes a recurring movement.
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