What Does 2 Kings 3:16 Mean?
And he said, Thus says the LORD, Make this valley full of trenches.
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 said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of ditches.THE KEY
The verse makes room for water before any water is visible.
THE MEANING
When the source is absent from sight, this verse pictures hollows being shaped in the dry valley. They do not produce the water; they make a place for it to be received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that visible provision must come before a place can be made ready for it.
THE ROOT
גֵּבִים
gebim
GROWS FROM
ג־ב־ב
To hollow out; form a pit or basin.
“trenches” in this verse is gebim. A ditch is made by removing earth, leaving a hollow that can hold what arrives. The Hebrew repeats the plural, gebim, gebim, so the command pictures the valley as a place of many hollows before the water appears.
ALSO GROWS
geb: A hollow or pit that can hold water.
גֵּב
The singular names the kind of hollow the verse commands the valley to become.
gebim: The plural form, also used for pits or cisterns.
גֵּבִים
Jeremiah uses this same plural for pits where people seek water but find none, showing that a hollow is a place to receive water, not a guarantee that water is there.
THE PATTERN
Provision may arrive beyond visible supply, while a prepared place can receive it.
And he pulled up from there, and dug another well, and over that they did not strive. And he called the name of it Rehoboth, the wide places, and he said, For now the LORD has widened a place for us, and we shall bear fruit in the land.Behold, I am making a new thing; now it sprouts; will you not perceive it? I will even lay a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the parched land.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
Their mighty ones have sent their little ones to the waters, and they came to the pits and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and dismayed, and they covered their heads.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew noun גֵּבִים (gebim, pits) for hollows where water is sought but absent. Here, the command to make those hollows rests on a promise that the valley will be filled; the root shows the space made to receive water, while the surrounding words name what fills it.
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