What Does 2 Kings 20:3 Mean?
I beseech you, O LORD, remember, please, how I have walked before you in truth and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your eyes. And Hezekiah wept with a great weeping.
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
I beseech thee, O LORD, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.THE KEY
The “perfect heart” is a whole heart: integrity is the unity of inner orientation, lived path, and visible action.
THE MEANING
The plea gives you language to bring a life into view before God: a walk in truth, a whole heart, and deeds good in God’s sight. The tears remain beside that testimony, allowing anguish and integrity to occupy the same moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that grief proves spiritual failure: Hezekiah’s tears sit beside his testimony of a whole heart and a truthful walk.
THE ROOT
שָׁלֵם
shalem
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be complete, whole, or sound.
Here, “perfect” carries the sense of a whole, sound heart, its inner orientation gathered into one life. The same root gives shalom, wholeness, linking the heart’s integrity with a life made whole.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This branch shows the sense of completeness inside “perfect”: the heart is whole, not divided.
shillem: Repay, make good, recompense
שִׁלֵּם
The same root can describe making good what is owed, connecting wholeness with what is brought to completion.
אֱמֶת
emet
GROWS FROM
אמן
To be firm, reliable, or established.
The truth in which Hezekiah walks grows from the seed of firmness and reliability. Its branches include emunah, trust one can lean on, and amen, firm or steady; truth here has the weight of a dependable life.
ALSO GROWS
emunah: Trust, steadiness
אֱמוּנָה
This branch makes truth something a person can lean their full weight on, not merely a statement to repeat.
amen: Firm, steady; truly
אָמֵן
The familiar response Amen shares the root’s sense of firmness, echoing a life that stands steady in truth.
חִזְקִיָּהוּ
Ḥizqiyyahu
GROWS FROM
חזק
To be strong, grow strong, or strengthen.
Hezekiah’s name carries the sense “YHWH strengthens.” Its place beside “wept sore” holds strength and anguished tears together in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
ḥazaq: Be strong, strengthen, prevail
חָזַק
This verb is the root beneath the name, framing strength as an active force.
maḥaziq: Holding, sustaining, maintaining
מַחֲזִיק
This form describes holding fast; the name’s strength can stand beside grief without requiring tearlessness.
THE PATTERN
Integrity becomes visible when a life’s inner truth and outward way of acting agree.
He who walks whole, works alignment, and speaks truth in his heart.Little children, let us not love in word, nor in the tongue, but in works and in truth.THE THREAD
Let your heart therefore be whole with the LORD our God, to walk in his statutes, and to guard his commandments, as on this day.The same Hebrew word שָׁלֵם (shalem, whole or complete) describes the heart here and in Hezekiah’s plea. This verse joins that wholeness to walking and keeping, making the link between heart and lived path explicit.
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