What Does 2 Kings 20:17 Mean?
Behold, the days are coming that all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have stored up until this day, shall be brought into Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the LORD.
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
Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The verse turns inheritance into cargo: what generations store in the house can be carried away until nothing remains.
THE MEANING
A household can be emptied of both its present goods and what earlier generations laid up; what was accumulated is carried into Babylon until nothing remains. Inherited treasure has no promise of staying in the house simply because it has been preserved there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what generations have stored and passed down is therefore secure.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂא
yissa
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
To lift, carry, or bear.
“shall be carried” in this verse is yissa. The Hebrew verb makes the removal a taking up and bearing away, not merely something disappearing. The house’s contents become what Babylon carries off.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This is the verb’s root form: Babylon bears the household’s contents away.
massa: A load or burden; something borne.
מַשָּׂא
This related word makes the carrying image concrete: what is stored becomes a load taken away.
אָצְרוּ
atsru
GROWS FROM
אצר
atsar
To store up or gather as treasure.
“stored up” in this verse is atsru. The verse says the fathers stored these things up until this day. The same root gives the noun for treasure or a storehouse, tying the act of accumulation to what is accumulated.
ALSO GROWS
atsar: To store up or treasure.
אָצַר
It names the action the fathers take: gathering and keeping things in store.
otsar: Treasure, treasury, or storehouse.
אֹצָר
The stored goods belong to the same word family as the treasure house that is emptied.
יִוָּתֵר
yivater
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
To remain over, be left, or be in surplus.
“Nothing shall be left” uses the root for what remains over. The sentence closes off even a remainder: the removal reaches the last thing.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: Remainder, excess, or surplus.
יֶתֶר
This related form names what might remain after something is taken; the verse says there is no remainder.
yitron: Advantage, gain, or profit.
יִתְרוֹן
The same root can name what is left as an advantage or gain; here the household is left with nothing.
THE PATTERN
What is gathered and held can be removed, leaving no guarantee that possession will endure.
And he said, Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I will turn back there. The LORD gave, and the LORD took; blessed be the name of the LORD.Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
As he comes from his mother's womb, naked he turns back to go as he comes. He lifts nothing from his toil that he can go away with in his hand.The same root, נשא (nasa: “lift, carry, bear”), names what Babylon carries from the house and what a person cannot carry away from their labor. The shared verb reveals the same movement at two scales: a household’s stores are borne away, and no one can make their possessions travel with them.
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