What Does 2 Kings 17:26 Mean?
So they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations you stripped bare and set in the cities of Samaria do not know the judgment of the God of the land. Therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they strike them down, because they do not know the judgment of the God of the land.
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
Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.THE KEY
The word rendered “manner” is mishpat, the judgment that orders life in the land, so the repeated ignorance reaches into the conditions of life itself.
THE MEANING
You can inhabit a place without knowing the order by which its God governs it; this verse sets that ignorance beside lethal consequence. It says the God of the land sends lions among the people, and they kill them. The verse names their not knowing as the reason, twice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Living somewhere does not mean you already know the order that governs it.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁפַּט
mishpat
GROWS FROM
שׁפט
sh-p-t
To judge, decide, and govern through judgment.
Mishpat can name a judgment, ordinance, or custom: a way life is ordered under authority. Here the verse repeats that the people do not know the mishpat of the God of the land, and names this ignorance as the reason for the lions.
ALSO GROWS
shaphat: To judge or render a decision.
שָׁפַט
The verb shows the action inside mishpat: judgment gives form to the order named in the verse.
shofet: A judge, one who renders judgment.
שֹׁפֵט
This branch connects the land’s mishpat to the authority of the God whose order its inhabitants do not know.
יָדְעוּ
yadəʿu
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“know” in this verse is yadəʿu. Yada carries the sense of knowing through recognition and encounter. Paired with mishpat, it makes the question whether the people recognize the order of the God whose land they inhabit.
ALSO GROWS
yodeaʿ: A person who knows or recognizes.
יֹדֵעַ
This form shows the same root describing a knower, making the verse’s question about recognition rather than a detached label.
maddaʿ: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
The noun grows from the same seed as yada; the verse uses the verb to say the people lack recognition of the land’s mishpat.
THE PATTERN
The God whose judgment orders life in the land also orders the boundaries in which all peoples dwell.
Far be it from you to do according to this word, to put to death the aligned with the wicked, and the aligned be as the wicked. Far be it from you! Will not the judge of all the earth make judgment?The awe of the LORD is clean, and stands for the ages; the judgments of the LORD are truth, aligned together.And he made from one blood every nation of humankind to settle upon all the face of the earth, marking out their fitted seasons and setting the boundary stones of their dwelling.THE THREAD
But let the one who boasts boast in this, that he discerns and perceives me, that I am the LORD who does faithful love, judgment, and alignment in the earth. For in these things I delight, says the LORD.Kings repeats “know not the mishpat”; Jeremiah brings the same roots together in “knoweth me” and “judgment.” It opens the phrase as knowing the God whose judgment is active in the earth.
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