What Does 2 Kings 24:15 Mean?
And he stripped bare Jehoiachin, and led him to Babylon, and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the strong of the land. Those he led into exile, from Jerusalem to Babylon.
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 he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the mighty of the land, those carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon.THE KEY
Conquest reaches into the royal household and the ruling class, carrying people away until even their place in the land is stripped from them.
THE MEANING
This verse lays bare the reach of conquest: the king, his mother and wives, his officers, and the powerful are carried from Jerusalem into captivity. Displacement seizes both household and civic life, exposing how much of a community is bound to its people and their place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that rank or authority makes someone untouchable: the king’s household and ruling circle are carried away too.
THE ROOT
וַיֶּגֶל
wayyeḡel
GROWS FROM
גלה
Uncover, reveal; in this verse, carry away into exile.
“stripped bare” in this verse is wayyeḡel. The root גלה holds uncovering and exile in one word family: here, carrying people away also exposes them to the loss of home and protection. The verse then uses גּוֹלָה for the exile into which they are led, showing removal and captivity as linked forms of the same root.
ALSO GROWS
galah: Uncover, reveal
גָּלָה
This verbal form shares the root’s consonants and shows the exposure sense alongside the verse’s sense of forced removal.
niglah: Be uncovered, be revealed
נִגְלָה
This form keeps the consonants גלה and makes the root’s sense of exposure visible beside the captives’ vulnerability.
golah: Exile, captivity
גּוֹלָה
This noun appears in the verse’s final clause; it names the state of exile that follows the carrying away.
THE PATTERN
Violence reaches beyond rulers to uproot households and communities, carrying displacement into memory.
And Nebuzaradan, chief of the slaughterers, carried away the rest of the people who were left in the city, and those who fell to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.By the rivers of Babylon, there we settled, and we wept when we remembered Zion.When they had withdrawn, look, a messenger of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Rise, take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to make him perish.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away, whom I have carried from Jerusalem to Babylon.Jeremiah 29:4 repeats גלה in both “carried away captives” and “caused to be carried away,” the same root family heard in וַיֶּגֶל and גּוֹלָה here. The shared root links the act of removal with the people living in exile.
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