What Does 2 Kings 20:20 Mean?
And the rest of the words of Hezekiah, and all his strength, and how he made a pool and a channel, and brought waters into the city, are they not written in the book of the words of the days of the kings of Judah?
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 rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?THE KEY
Might is shown here as the capacity to make a passage through which sustaining water reaches the city.
THE MEANING
Strength can take the form of opening a route for sustaining water to enter a community. The city does not make the water; a passage makes its arrival possible.
THE ROOT
הַתְּעָלָה
hatteʿālāh
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
Go up, ascend.
English makes “conduit” sound like a static object, while its Hebrew word belongs to a root of movement. The channel carries that movement into the verse: water is given a route toward the city.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōlāh: Burnt offering; that which goes up.
עֹלָה
This branch preserves the root’s upward movement in a word for an offering that ascends.
maʿālāh: Ascent, step.
מַעֲלָה
It makes the root’s movement concrete, showing that the word for a channel belongs to a family of motion rather than naming only a structure.
וַיָּבֵא
wayyāvēʾ
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
Come, enter; in this verb, cause to come or bring in.
“brought” in this verse is wayyāvēʾ. The verb is a causative form of “come”: the action makes the water arrive inside. English centers the transport, while Hebrew also holds the water’s entry in the word.
ALSO GROWS
bōʾ: Come, enter.
בּוֹא
The root’s basic motion is arrival and entry, the movement the water makes into the city.
māvo: Entrance, entryway.
מָבוֹא
This related word keeps entry and access within the same root family as bringing the water in.
חִזְקִיָּהוּ
Ḥizqiyyāhû
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥ-z-q
Be strong, strengthen.
Hezekiah’s name carries the root חזק, “strengthen,” together with the divine name: “YHWH strengthens.” Beside the waterworks, the name makes strength visible in work that secures water within the city.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāzaq: Be strong, strengthen.
חָזַק
The verb expresses strength as an active making firm.
ḥāzāq: Strong, firm.
חָזָק
This form carries the quality of strength or firmness in the same consonantal family.
THE PATTERN
Sustaining water reaches places of human life through a passage that gives it a way to flow.
There is a river, whose channels make glad the city of God, the set-apart dwellings of the Most High.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 Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean beast and of every clean bird, and sent up rising offerings on the altar.The Hebrew word for “conduit” belongs to עלה, “go up”; “burnt offerings” here also comes from that root, naming what goes up. The words describe different things, but their shared root links them through motion that English leaves hidden.
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