What Does 2 Kings 14:4 Mean?
Yet the high places did not turn aside. The people still slaughtered, and made the smoke of incense rise on the high places.
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
Howbeit the high places were not taken away: as yet the people did sacrifice and burnt incense on the high places.THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “taken away” also means “turn aside”: the high places have not moved out of the way, and sacrifice still gathers there.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the present reader about partial change: what appears aligned can still leave familiar places and practices active. It holds both facts together, naming the high places still standing and the sacrifice and incense still happening there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assumption that a person’s good direction means every inherited practice has already fallen away; the verse places continuing sacrifice beside what remains in place.
THE ROOT
סָרוּ
saru
GROWS FROM
סור
sur
To turn aside or depart; in a causative form, to remove.
“did not turn aside” in this verse is saru. The high places are the subject of saru: they have not turned aside or been removed. The verb gives removal the sense of departure, while the rest of the verse shows what remains active on those sites.
ALSO GROWS
yasur: He will turn aside or depart.
יָסוּר
This form makes the motion inside “taken away” visible: removal is a turning from a place.
hesir: He removed; a causative form of סור (sur).
הֵסִיר
The same root can name the act of removing something, which the verse says has not happened here.
מְזַבְּחִים
mezabbechim
GROWS FROM
זבח
z-b-ḥ
To slaughter or offer in sacrifice.
“slaughtered” in this verse is mezabbechim. The verse names sacrifice as a continuing action, not merely a remnant of the past. Hebrew also names the altar from this same root, linking the act of sacrifice to the place arranged for it.
ALSO GROWS
zevaḥ: A sacrifice or sacrificial meal.
זֶבַח
It shares the root of the ongoing action in this verse, making the continuing practice explicit.
mizbeaḥ: Altar, the place of sacrifice.
מִזְבֵּחַ
The altar and the act of sacrifice grow from the same root, joining practice and place.
מְקַטְּרִים
meqatterim
GROWS FROM
קטר
q-ṭ-r
To make smoke or offer incense.
“made the smoke of incense rise” in this verse is meqatterim. The verb for burning incense belongs to the same word family as the incense itself and the rising smoke. The verse holds the recurring act and what it sends into the air together.
ALSO GROWS
qetoret: Incense.
קְטֹרֶת
The noun for incense comes from the same root as the act of burning it here.
qitor: Smoke or vapor.
קִיטוֹר
This branch makes the visible result of the incense practice part of the same root family.
THE PATTERN
A change in direction can coexist with places and practices that remain active.
But the high places were not removed; yet Asa's heart was whole with the LORD all his days.But the high places did not turn aside, and the people still slaughtered and made smoke rise in the high places.Nevertheless the people still slaughtered in the high places, only to the LORD their God.THE THREAD
He removed the high places, broke the standing stones, cut down the Asherah poles, and broke to pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the children of Israel made smoke rise to it. And he called it Nehushtan, the bronze thing.Here hēsîr (הֵסִיר, “removed”) shares the root סור (sur, “turn aside or depart”) with saru (סָרוּ) in this verse. The same root now names removal completed, while the continuing incense shows that a place or object can remain bound to practice until it is addressed.
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