What Does 2 Kings 2:19 Mean?
And the men of the city said to Elisha, Behold, I pray you, the seat of this city is good, as my lord sees; but the waters are bad, and the ground miscarries.
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 men of the city said unto Elisha, Behold, I pray thee, the situation of this city is pleasant, as my lord seeth: but the water is naught, and the ground barren.THE KEY
The ground is called “barren” with a word rooted in bereavement: it is not simply empty, but unable to bring forth what should live.
THE MEANING
A place can look pleasant while its source remains harmful: the water is bad, and the ground cannot bear life. The word translated “barren” carries the force of bereavement, naming the loss of what ought to emerge. The verse holds appearance and source in the same view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a pleasant surface proves the source beneath it is life-giving.
THE ROOT
מְשַׁכֶּלֶת
meshakkelet
GROWS FROM
שכל
To bereave, deprive of offspring, or make childless.
“miscarries” in this verse is meshakkelet. The Hebrew word describes the ground as bereaving: what should come forth is lost. “Barren” therefore carries the deeper sense of a land that withholds life, not merely one that looks empty.
ALSO GROWS
shikkēl: To bereave or make childless.
שִׁכֵּל
This verb shows the active force inside the description of the ground: its barrenness is tied to loss.
shakhul: Bereaved or childless.
שָׁכוּל
The same root names the condition of having lost offspring, giving the land’s failure the weight of a lost future.
THE PATTERN
Life depends on its source: where water fails, fruitfulness fails; where water flows, life can return.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was split and became four heads.He turns the wilderness into a pool of waters, and the thirsting ground into outgoings of waters.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
And he went out to the outflow of the waters, and threw the salt in there, and said, Thus says the LORD, I have healed these waters; there shall be no more death from there, nor ground that miscarries.The same Hebrew word for “barren” appears here and in the next verse. The thread makes the harm concrete: when the waters are healed, the ground no longer bereaves the city of what should grow.
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