What Does 2 Kings 15:29 Mean?
In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglathpileser king of Assyria came and took Ijon, Abelbethmaachah, Janoah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and laid them bare, carrying them off to Assyria.
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
In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel-beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.THE KEY
The Hebrew for “carried captive” shares a root with “uncover”: exile removes people from the place that held them.
THE MEANING
This verse shows conquest reaching beyond individual cities: named towns, a whole territory, and its people are all taken. “All the land of Naphtali” makes the scale explicit, while “carried captive” names the people’s forced removal into Assyria.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that belonging to a homeland guarantees possession of it: an invading power can take the territory and remove the people who live there.
THE ROOT
וַיַּגְלֵם
wayyaglem
GROWS FROM
גלה
g-l-h
To uncover or remove; in this verb form, to carry away into exile.
“laid them bare, carrying them off” in this verse is wayyaglem. This root holds uncovering and exile together as forms of removal: a covering can be taken away, or people can be taken from their place. Here, the verb names people removed along with the territory.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To uncover, reveal, or remove.
גָּלָה
The same root used for carrying people into exile can describe uncovering, linking both actions through removal.
golah: Exile; an exiled community.
גּוֹלָה
This branch names the condition of the people taken from their land.
נַפְתָּלִי
Naphtali
GROWS FROM
פתל
p-t-l
To twist, wrestle, or struggle; the name is linked to Rachel’s language of wrestling.
In Genesis, Rachel connects Naphtali’s name with her struggle. So when this verse names “all the land of Naphtali,” the dispossession reaches a territory whose name carries that association, not merely a point on an imperial list.
ALSO GROWS
naphtulei: Wrestlings or struggles.
נַפְתּוּלֵי
Rachel uses this form when explaining the name Naphtali in Genesis 30:8.
niftalti: I have wrestled.
נִפְתַּלְתִּי
This verb from the same root gives the name its connection to struggle in Genesis 30:8.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names captivity as removal from one’s place and names release as its answer.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, stripped Israel bare, and led them into Assyria. He set them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan and in the cities of the Medes.Thus says the LORD, for three rebellions of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn it back; because they uncovered an entire people and handed them over to Edom.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
And he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.The Hebrew verb translated “uncovered” comes from the same root as “carried captive” here. The actions differ, but the shared root carries the idea of removal, of a covering, or of people from their land.
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