What Does 2 Kings 5:27 Mean?
Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you, and to your seed for the ages. And he went out from before his face a leper white as snow.
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
The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.THE KEY
The verb translated “cleave” makes the sentence’s force an attachment that reaches beyond one body into the next generation.
THE MEANING
Here, consequence takes the form of attachment: Naaman’s affliction cleaves to Gehazi and is named as reaching his seed. The body bears the sentence in a visible condition, and the final image leaves him going out white as snow.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that consequence can always be contained within the person who bears it: here, it is declared to cling also to his seed.
THE ROOT
תִּדְבַּק
tidbaq
GROWS FROM
דבק
dabaq
To cling, stick fast, remain joined.
“cling” in this verse is tidbaq. The same verb names a person’s joining to another in covenant and Ruth’s attachment to Naomi; here it names a disease that will not release its bearer. The root itself is not limited to devotion or affliction: it names the tenacity of attachment.
ALSO GROWS
vedavaq: And he shall cleave.
וְדָבַק
In Genesis, the same verb describes a man joining himself to his wife, showing that this root can name intimate union.
davqah: She clung.
דָּבְקָה
Ruth clings to Naomi with this root; set beside Gehazi’s affliction, the shared word reveals how the same tenacity can hold very different things fast.
זַרְעֲךָ
zar'akha
GROWS FROM
זרע
zara
To sow; the same root family names seed and offspring.
The word for offspring belongs to the same seed-language as sowing, so the sentence reaches past the present body into what grows from it. Its declared scope is not only what cleaves now, but what is carried forward.
ALSO GROWS
zera: Seed; offspring.
זֶרַע
This branch names both what is sown and a line of descendants, illuminating the verse’s extension beyond Gehazi himself.
vayyizra: And he sowed.
וַיִּזְרַע
The verb for sowing shares the root: what is called seed here also carries the image of something planted and growing onward.
THE PATTERN
The verb of cleaving names whatever holds fast, whether it joins people in loyalty or binds affliction to its bearer.
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.And they lifted up their voice, and wept again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.The LORD shall make the pestilence cling to you, until he has run you out from off the ground, where you come to possess it.THE THREAD
And they lifted up their voice, and wept again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.Ruth uses the same verb when she clings to Naomi. The root names tenacious attachment; here, its force is severe because what adheres is affliction, and the sentence declares that it reaches beyond one person.
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