What Does 2 Chronicles 6:29 Mean?
Whatever prayer or plea shall be made by any man, or by all your people Israel, who shall each know the plague of his own heart, and spread his palms in this house,
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
Then what prayer or what supplication soever shall be made of any man, or of all thy people Israel, when every one shall know his own sore and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in this house:THE KEY
The particular wound you know becomes a doorway into prayer when you carry it open-handed toward the house.
THE MEANING
Your prayer rises from the particular wound and ache you know in yourself. Your open hands carry that pain toward the house, where personal grief and the people’s prayer meet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that prayer must be impersonal dissolves here: the verse makes room for each person’s own sore and grief.
THE ROOT
יֵדְעוּ
yēdeʿû
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
to know, recognize, perceive
“each know” in this verse is yēdeʿû. יָדַע (yādaʿ, know) names knowing by encounter, not mere receipt of information. The prayer follows this knowing: a person recognizes the trouble as their own before opening their hands toward the house.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: to know, recognize
יָדַע
This verb is used for the personal knowing that precedes the prayer in the verse.
daʿat: knowledge, perception
דַּעַת
This noun shows the same root’s movement from knowing to what is recognized.
נִגְעוֹ
nigʿô
GROWS FROM
נגע
n-g-ʿ
to touch or strike
“plague” in this verse is nigʿô. The word rendered “sore” is נִגְעוֹ (nigʿô, his affliction), from a root meaning touch or strike. Its seed gives the affliction the sense of something that has touched or struck this particular person, making the pain concrete rather than generic.
ALSO GROWS
nāgaʿ: to touch, strike
נָגַע
The verb reveals the contact carried in the word for affliction.
negaʿ: a blow, plague, affliction
נֶגַע
This noun shares the verse’s root and makes the sore a specific affliction.
מַכְאֹבוֹ
makʾōvô
GROWS FROM
כאב
k-ʾ-b
to ache, hurt, be in pain
מַכְאֹבוֹ (makʾōvô, his pain) grows from כאב (k-ʾ-b, ache or hurt), joining grief to felt pain. Isaiah uses this same root for “sorrows,” where pain too is named as something known.
ALSO GROWS
kāʾav: to hurt, ache
כָּאַב
The verb names the felt pain at the root of the verse’s word for grief.
makʾōv: pain, sorrow
מַכְאוֹב
This noun is formed from the same root and carries the ache into the verse’s wording.
THE PATTERN
Prayer becomes particular when each person brings the trouble they know into view before God.
I pour out my murmuring before him; I set forth my narrow place before him.Lean your full weight upon him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before him. God is our shelter. Selah.Jesus answered and said to him, What do you want me to do for you? The blind man said to him, My teacher, that I might look up again.THE THREAD
He is despised and left off by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And as one hiding the face, we hid our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not reckon him.Isaiah’s מַכְאֹבוֹת (makʾovot, pains or sorrows) comes from the same root כאב (k-ʾ-b, to ache) as this verse’s מַכְאֹבוֹ (makʾōvô, his pain or grief), and וִידוּעַ (viduaʿ, known or acquainted) shares the ידע (y-d-ʿ, know) root. The verses mirror one another: here each person knows their own grief; there, the figure is described as acquainted with pain.
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