What Does 2 Kings 20:14 Mean?
Then Isaiah the prophet came to King Hezekiah and said to him, What did these men say? And from where have they come to you? And Hezekiah said, They have come from a far land, even from Babylon.
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
Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? and from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country, even from Babylon.THE KEY
Three forms of the Hebrew root בוא (b-w-ʾ, “come, enter”) turn the visitors’ arrival into a question about where they come from.
THE MEANING
This verse brings two questions into one view: what these visitors say and where they come from. Its answer places them at a distance and names Babylon, so their words and their source arrive together.
THE ROOT
בָּאוּ
bāʾû
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ (bōʾ): to come, enter, arrive.
“came” in this verse is bāʾû. This root appears three times in the verse: Isaiah comes, the question asks where the men come from, and Hezekiah says they have come from Babylon. One root carries the movement through to the answer, making origin part of the encounter.
ALSO GROWS
māvoʾ: entrance, approach
מָבוֹא
The same ב־ו־א consonants form a word for an entrance, linking the visitors’ arrival with their entry into the king’s space.
tevuʾāh: produce, yield, income
תְּבוּאָה
This branch names what comes in as a yield, extending the root’s sense of arrival to what a visit may bring with it.
רְחוֹקָה
reḥōqāh
GROWS FROM
רחק
r-ḥ-q (rāḥaq): to be far or distant.
The word marks the visitors by distance before naming Babylon as their point of origin. The same root can describe distance being made or extended, so “far” carries both a condition and the possibility of separation.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥōq: far, distant
רָחוֹק
This form shares the ר־ח־ק root and names distance directly, as the verse does.
hirḥīq: to move away, put at a distance
הִרְחִיק
This form shares the same consonants and makes distance something enacted: someone or something is moved farther away.
THE PATTERN
What arrives is read through both what it says and where it comes from.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.Does the same spring gush from the same opening, the sweet and the bitter?THE THREAD
You perceive my sitting and my rising, and from afar you separate out my thought.The same Hebrew root רחק (r-ḥ-q, “be far”) marks Babylon as distant here and appears in “afar off” in this psalm. There, distance does not prevent understanding: even thought at a distance is known.
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