What Does 2 Kings 7:13 Mean?
And one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, please, five of the horses that remain in the city. Behold, they are like all the multitude of Israel that are left in it. Behold, I say, they are like all the multitude of Israel that have run out. And let us send and see.
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 one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city, (behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are consumed:) and let us send and see.THE KEY
The horses are “left over” and the Israelites are “left” under two different Hebrew roots, but the verse’s next move is to send someone out and see.
THE MEANING
The few horses still available seem no safer than the people already trapped in the city. The servant proposes sending them out to learn what is actually there, even when the danger seems to leave little to lose. Uncertainty remains, but it becomes something they can investigate.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that nothing remains to be learned once every option seems doomed.
THE ROOT
וְנִשְׁלְחָה
wenishleḥah
GROWS FROM
שלח
to send, dispatch, send away, or release
The proposal ends with an outward dispatch: they send someone to see beyond the city’s enclosure. This root also carries the sense of sending away or letting go, so the verse’s movement begins with something being sent out.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: sending away, dismissal, release
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch holds together the ideas of sending away and release found in the root.
shaliach: one sent, a messenger
שָׁלִיחַ
The scouts are people sent out to bring back what they see.
הַנּוֹתָרִים
hannotarim
GROWS FROM
יתר
to remain, be left over, or be in excess
“remain” in this verse is hannotarim. The horses are described with a root that carries the sense of what is left over. A few words later, the Israelites who are “left” are named with a different root, so the English repeats one idea where the Hebrew gives two shades of what survives.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: remainder, surplus
יֶתֶר
The horses are the remainder still available to be sent.
yitron: advantage, gain
יִתְרוֹן
This branch can name what remains as a possible advantage; here, the horses can still help reveal what lies beyond the city.
נִשְׁאֲרוּ
nishʾaru
GROWS FROM
שאר
to remain or survive; to be left
“remain” in this verse is nishʾaru. The Israelites are described with the root of survival and remnant, distinct from the horses’ “left over” word. The servant’s comparison makes their vulnerability equal while the Hebrew preserves different words for what the siege has left behind.
ALSO GROWS
sheʾar: remainder, rest
שְׁאָר
It names what is left after others are gone, like the people still inside the city.
sheʾerit: remnant, survivors
שְׁאֵרִית
This branch makes the survival sense explicit in the servant’s comparison.
THE PATTERN
Under uncertainty, sending someone to see turns an assumption about what remains into observable evidence.
And see the land, what it is, and the people who dwell in it, whether they are firm or slack, whether they are few or many.He said to them, How many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had come to know, they said, Five, and two fish.And Nathanael said to him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see.THE THREAD
And the LORD spoke to Moses, Go in to Pharaoh, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me.The Hebrew root שלח (shalach, send or release) appears in “let my people go” and in the servant’s proposal to send and see. In Exodus it releases a people from confinement; here, it sends someone out from the city’s narrowing uncertainty.
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