What Does 2 Kings 17:31 Mean?
And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.
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
And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.THE KEY
The gods’ names stand beside the burning, so religious names cannot blur what the children endure.
THE MEANING
This verse keeps the children in view as the ones burned in fire; the named gods do not obscure the violence. Its language makes the cost of devotion visible to the reader now, without softening it into abstraction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Calling an act worship makes its violence disappear.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׂרְפוּ
wayyisrefu
GROWS FROM
שרף
śāraph
To burn or consume with fire.
“burnt” in this verse is wayyisrefu. The root שרף (śāraph, to burn) also appears in the word for seraphim, “burning ones.” Here the children are the ones burned: the root keeps the physical act visible beneath the religious names.
ALSO GROWS
śāraph: To burn or consume with fire.
שָׂרַף
This verb names the act directly, leaving no ambiguity about what happens to the children.
śərāphîm: Burning ones; seraphim.
שְׂרָפִים
The shared root carries the image of burning into another word, showing how the language keeps this image joined across forms.
THE PATTERN
The biblical text names the people harmed even when the act is presented as worship.
You shall not do so to the LORD your God, for every recoiling thing to the LORD, which he hates, they have done to their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burned in the fire to their gods.They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they slaughtered to the idols of Canaan, and the land was stained with blood.And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it rise up into my heart.THE THREAD
And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it rise up into my heart.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew root שרף (śāraph, to burn) and names the same act. It opens this verse further by making clear that the burning itself remains explicit, and that God did not command it.
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