What Does 2 Kings 18:17 Mean?
And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a heavy army against Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they had gone up, they came and stood by the channel of the upper pool, which is on the raised road of the fuller's field.
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 king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field.THE KEY
Jerusalem carries the name of wholeness even as an invading army reaches the channel that sustains it.
THE MEANING
Pressure reaches the source that sustains Jerusalem: the great host comes to the conduit, while the city’s name still carries wholeness. Threat and wholeness stand together in the same scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that a real wholeness means no threat can reach you; here, the threat arrives at the city’s water channel without erasing the wholeness its name carries.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
wayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ח
shalach
To send forth, release, or stretch out.
“sent” in this verse is wayyishlach. The king sends an army as an act of pressure, but shalach also carries the sense of release and sending forth. English gives the action one shade here; the root opens it beside the same sending that can carry release elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal, release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch brings the root’s releasing sense into view beside the king’s hostile dispatch.
Shiloach: Sent; the name behind Siloam, the pool of Sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The sent waters of Siloam connect the root of this army’s sending with a channel through which sight is restored.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ם
shalom
Wholeness, completeness; the city’s name carries shalom, wholeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name holds wholeness while the scene holds invasion. The city’s name does not mean danger is absent; here, wholeness and threat occupy the same ground.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in Jerusalem’s name, set against the approaching host.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the name’s language of completeness audible even as the conduit is exposed to attack.
THE PATTERN
What is sent carries the character of its purpose: it can press into constriction or become a channel of release and restoration.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.Both verses use shalach for sending. In this scene, the king sends an army to Jerusalem’s conduit; in the psalm, a sent word heals and delivers, revealing how much depends on what the sending carries.
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