What Does 2 Kings 17:29 Mean?
Yet every nation made gods of its own and set them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in all their cities where they settled.
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 every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt.THE KEY
The same root says they make both the gods and the places that house them: the sacred scene is made from end to end.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two acts of making together: each nation makes its gods, then sets them inside high places already made by others. The pattern remains present wherever humanly made forms are given sacred placement and authority.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the assumption that something becomes divine because it occupies a sacred place: here, both the gods and their high places are made.
THE ROOT
עֹשִׂים
ʿōśîm
GROWS FROM
עשה
Do, make, bring about.
The verse uses this root for both the gods the nations make and the high places the Samaritans made. Hebrew keeps the objects of devotion and the places that house them within the same language of human making.
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: Work, deed, or product.
מַעֲשֶׂה
Psalm 115:4 calls idols “the work of men’s hands,” naming them as the product of making.
oseh: One who does or makes.
עֹשֶׂה
This form keeps the maker in view alongside what is made; the verse names both the act and its result.
וַיַּנִּיחוּ
vayannîḥû
GROWS FROM
נוח
Rest, settle, or set down.
“put” in this verse is vayannîḥû. The verb here means to set something down or cause it to rest in a place. The nations do not only make gods; they give them a settled place inside an existing sacred structure.
ALSO GROWS
nuach: To rest or settle.
נוּחַ
It shows the placement as settling something into a location, rather than simply producing it.
menuchah: Rest or resting place.
מְנוּחָה
This branch echoes the verse’s concern with where the gods are set and housed.
THE PATTERN
People make forms they revere and place them within environments treated as sacred.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.Who has shaped a god, or poured out a hewn image that profits nothing?Since then we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think the divine is like gold, or silver, or stone, carved by craft and by human imagining.THE THREAD
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands.“Work” is מַעֲשֶׂה (ma’aseh), from the same root עשה (asah) as “made” in this verse. The shared root makes the link plain: what is revered here is also named as something made by human hands.
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