What Does 2 Kings 3:18 Mean?
And this is but a light thing in the eyes of the LORD. He will give the Moabites also into your hand.
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 this is but a light thing in the sight of the LORD: he will deliver the Moabites also into your hand.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls the promised water a light matter, then uses “also” to add Moab’s defeat, provision and conquest share one sentence.
THE MEANING
The word “this” points to the promised water: it is light in the LORD’s sight, and Moab’s defeat is added as well. The verse holds provision beside conquest, naming Moab’s transfer into Israel’s power without softening its violence.
THE ROOT
וְנָקַל
wə-nāqal
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
Be light or slight; make light of.
English “light” can sound like a judgment of importance, while this Hebrew root also carries the sense of being counted slight or treated with contempt. Here it describes the water provision as easy in the LORD’s sight; it does not call Moab light.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light, slight, or swift.
קַל
This adjective shows the root’s sense of lightness that underlies the verse’s description of the water provision.
watteqal: Was counted slight; was despised.
וַתֵּקַל
The same root describes Hagar’s mistress as despised in her eyes in Genesis 16:4, revealing how “light” can extend from ease to being treated as negligible.
וְנָתַן
wə-nāṯan
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, or place.
The Hebrew verb says “give”; with “into your hand,” it pictures Moab placed under Israel’s power. The root’s branches can name gifts or people given into service, but here what is given is a people under conquest.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift; something given.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root makes the underlying sense of “give” visible in the verse’s wording.
nethinim: Given ones; temple servants.
נְתִינִים
These servants’ name comes from the same give-root, showing how it can describe people placed into another’s service.
THE PATTERN
The scale humans assign to a need, nation, or beginning does not set its measure before God.
See, the nations are like a drop from the bucket, and are counted as the dust on the scale; see, he lifts up the coastlands like fine dust.For who has looked down on the day of small things? They will rejoice and see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel, along with these seven, the eyes of the LORD, roaming through all the earth.For with God nothing will be impossible.THE THREAD
And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress became light in her eyes.The Hebrew word translated “despised” comes from the same root as “light” in 2 Kings 3:18; literally, Hagar counted her mistress as slight in her eyes. The shared root moves between a matter being light or easy and someone being treated as negligible.
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