What Does 2 Kings 14:13 Mean?

And Jehoash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, son of Jehoash, son of Ahaziah, at Beth-shemesh, and came to Jerusalem, and broke through the wall of Jerusalem from the Gate of Ephraim to the Corner Gate, four hundred cubits.

2 Kings 14:13 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And Jehoash king of Israel took Amaziah king of Judah, the son of Jehoash the son of Ahaziah, at Beth-shemesh, and came to Jerusalem, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim unto the corner gate, four hundred cubits.

THE KEY

The four-hundred-cubit breach makes conquest measurable: force opens the boundary of the city whose name carries wholeness.

THE MEANING

Jehoash takes Amaziah, then breaches Jerusalem’s wall. The verse measures the violence from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, making the city’s broken boundary visible.

THE ROOT

פָּרַץ

pāraṣ

GROWS FROM

פרץ

p-r-ṣ

Break through, burst out, make a breach.

“broke through” in this verse is pāraṣ. The verb behind “brake down” belongs to a word family that names both the breaking-through and the breach it leaves. Hebrew ties the violence to the opening it creates: here, the wall is not simply damaged but broken through.

ALSO GROWS

perets: A breach or break

פֶּרֶץ

The related noun names the opening left by the force described in this verse.

pārîts: A violent one, a breaker or robber

פָּרִיץ

This related word links the violent agent with the act of breaking through.

יְרוּשָׁלַיִם

Yerushalayim

GROWS FROM

שלם

sh-l-m

Wholeness, completeness.

“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name Yerushalayim carries the sound and meaning of shalom (⁨שָׁלוֹם⁩, shalom: wholeness). Here that name stands beside a wall breached across four hundred cubits, holding the city’s wholeness and its violent opening in the same scene.

ALSO GROWS

shalom: Wholeness, completeness

שָׁלוֹם

This is the wholeness carried in the city’s name, set beside the measured breach.

shalem: Whole, complete

שָׁלֵם

This related form makes the root’s sense of wholeness concrete against the wall’s broken boundary.

THE PATTERN

Conquest becomes visible when a place’s protective boundary is breached, stripped away, or turned into a means of confinement.

Come, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break through its wall, and it shall be trampled.

Isaiah 5:5 · SDVRemoving the hedge and wall exposes the vineyard, as the breached wall here exposes the city to conquest.

They will ruin the walls of Tyre and tear down her towers. I will scrape her dust from her and set her as a bare rock.

Ezekiel 26:4 · SDVThe walls and towers of Tyrus are broken down, making the city’s defeat visible in its dismantled defenses.

For days will come upon you, when your enemies will drive stakes around you, and surround you, and press you in on every side.

Luke 19:43 · SDVThe city’s boundary becomes a means of confinement as enemies surround it on every side.

THE THREAD

Jerusalem is built as a city bound together.

Psalm 122:3 · SDV

Here Jerusalem’s wall is broken across four hundred cubits; Psalm 122 pictures the same city joined together. The contrast makes the breach a visible undoing of the city’s cohesion.

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