What Does 2 Kings 23:31 Mean?
Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
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
Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.THE KEY
Jehoahaz means “YHWH has grasped,” placing a name of holding beside a reign measured in only three months.
THE MEANING
You can know a visible season is brief without letting its length define everything that holds you. Here, three months mark the reign, while the name in the same sentence says “YHWH has grasped.”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A short season proves that you were never held.
THE ROOT
יְהוֹאָחָז
Yeho'achaz
GROWS FROM
אָחַז
To grasp, seize, or hold.
“Jehoahaz” in this verse is Yeho'achaz. The name joins the divine name to the root for grasping: “YHWH has grasped.” This root names both the act of taking hold and the resulting state of being held, so the three months measure the visible reign without exhausting what the name carries.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāḥaz: To grasp, seize, or hold.
אָחַז
This verb supplies the core image carried in Jehoahaz’s name.
ʾăḥuzzāh: Holding, possession, or landed property.
אֲחֻזָּה
The noun shows the root extending from grasping into what is held or possessed.
THE PATTERN
A visible boundary can mark a season without defining the reach of the one who holds.
Even there your hand leads me, and your right hand grasps me.I give them the life of the ages, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.THE THREAD
It is but a little that I pass from them, and I find him whom my living soul loves. I grip him, and I will not release him, until I bring him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of the one who conceived me.The Hebrew אֲחַזְתִּיו (ʾăḥaztîw, “I held him”) comes from אָחַז (ʾāḥaz, “grasp, hold”), the same root carried in יְהוֹאָחָז (Yeho’achaz, “YHWH has grasped”). The name opens into a living verb: grasping, holding, not letting go.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us