What Does 2 Kings 6:24 Mean?
And it came to pass after this, Ben-hadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and pressed against Samaria.
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 it came to pass after this, that Ben-hadad king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria.THE KEY
The Hebrew names siege as binding pressure, a whole city being tightened into distress.
THE MEANING
A threat becomes unmistakable when it gathers force and closes around a whole place. You meet the danger at its most enclosing here: it is real, collective, and unresolved; the verse gives no release yet.
THE ROOT
וַיָּצַר
wayyāṣar
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
tsarar
to bind, tighten, or constrain; to besiege
“pressed against” in this verse is wayyāṣar. The verb pictures the attack as a tightening that closes a city’s space. מֵצַר (metsar, narrow place or distress) and צָרָה (tsarah, trouble or distress) keep the same constriction visible as both place and lived pressure.
ALSO GROWS
metsar: narrow place; distress
מֵצַר
Psalm 118:5 uses this narrow-place word for the speaker’s constricted state before being set in a large place.
tsarah: trouble; distress
צָרָה
This branch names the distress felt within the pressure that the siege imposes from outside.
שֹׁמְרוֹן
Shomron
GROWS FROM
שמר
shamar
to guard, keep, or watch
“Samaria” in this verse is Shomron. The Hebrew name Shomron echoes שָׁמַר (shamar, guard or watch). The place-name carries watchfulness into a scene where the city is exposed to an enclosing force.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: keeper; watchman
שֹׁמֵר
The keeper or watchman gives the name’s sound of watchfulness a human form.
mishmeret: guard; watch; charge
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch connects the name’s watchfulness to the protection now put under pressure.
THE PATTERN
Siege and distress share a spatial grammar: pressure closes in, while release is pictured as room.
He will press against you in all your gates until your high and fenced walls go down, the walls in which you are leaning your full weight, throughout all your land. He will press against you in all your gates, throughout all your land, which the LORD your God has given you.From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.We are pressed on every side, yet not cramped into a narrow place; we are without a way through, yet not without a way out.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.Psalm 118:5 uses מֵצַר (metsar, narrow place or distress), a related form in the same bind-and-narrow word-family as the verb translated “besieged” here. Its answer is מֶרְחָב (merchav, broad place), opening the siege’s tightening onto the language of spaciousness.
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