What Does 2 Kings 21:1 Mean?
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hephzibah.
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
Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and reigned fifty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hephzi-bah.THE KEY
The king’s mother is named Hephzibah, ‘my delight is in her’, so delight sits beside the measure of his reign.
THE MEANING
A life is more than a title or the number of years it holds that title. Beside the language of rule, the verse preserves a name that carries delight in its meaning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Your worth is measured only by your authority, your output, or how long your season lasts.
THE ROOT
חֶפְצִי־בָהּ
ḥep̄ṣî-vāh
GROWS FROM
חפץ
To desire, take pleasure in, or delight in.
“Hephzi-bah” in this verse is ḥep̄ṣî-vāh. The name is a phrase, not just a label: ‘my delight is in her.’ Its root חפץ (ḥ-p-ṣ, desire or delight) also appears in Isaiah’s words that the LORD ‘delighteth in thee,’ opening a deeper connection between the name and the language of delight.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāp̄ēṣ: Desire or delight in.
חָפֵץ
This verbal form appears in Isaiah 62:4, where the LORD delighteth in the one called Hephzibah.
ḥēp̄eṣ: Delight, desire, or pleasure.
חֵפֶץ
The related noun shows that the name grows from the language of desire and pleasure, not from a royal title.
מְנַשֶּׁה
mənaššeh
GROWS FROM
נשה
To forget; in this name, to cause to forget.
The name carries the sense of ‘causing to forget,’ the same root Joseph uses when he says God has made him forget his toil. English leaves Manasseh as a name alone; Hebrew lets it carry a verb’s meaning alongside Hephzibah’s delight.
ALSO GROWS
nāšâ: To forget.
נָשָׁה
This is the root behind Manasseh’s name, giving the name a meaning beyond identification.
naššānî: He made me forget.
נַשַּׁנִי
Joseph uses this form in Genesis 41:51 when explaining the name Manasseh, making the name itself a compressed statement about forgetting.
THE PATTERN
A scriptural name can carry a condition, character, or promise inside the word that identifies someone.
And Joseph called the name of the firstborn the Forget-Maker, Manasseh, for God has made me forget all my toil and all my father's house.You shall no more be called Left Behind, and your land shall no more be called Stunned; but you shall be called Hephzibah, my delight is in her, and your land Beulah, wedded; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be wed.And she will bring forth a son, and you will call his name Jesus, the LORD's deliverance, for he will deliver his people from their missing.THE THREAD
You shall no more be called Left Behind, and your land shall no more be called Stunned; but you shall be called Hephzibah, my delight is in her, and your land Beulah, wedded; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be wed.Isaiah names the one who is no longer called Forsaken Hephzibah, then says the LORD ‘delighteth in thee.’ The name and ‘delighteth’ share חפץ (ḥ-p-ṣ, desire or delight), so the name in this verse already carries the root that Isaiah makes explicit.
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