What Does 2 Kings 8:6 Mean?
And when the king asked the woman, she recounted it to him. So the king raised up for her a certain officer, saying, Turn back to her all that was hers, and all the yield of the field since the day she left the land, even until now.
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 when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed unto her a certain officer, saying, Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even until now.THE KEY
The order to restore reaches beyond what she owned to every harvest the land produced while she was away.
THE MEANING
A rightful claim can be spoken aloud and answered in full. What returns includes the yield produced during the years of absence, so restoration reaches beyond the original possession to the interval itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Absence does not automatically erase a claim, and time away does not make the yield from what was yours disappear.
THE ROOT
הָשִׁיבִי
hāshîvî
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To return or turn back; in this form, to cause something to return.
“Turn back” in this verse is hāshîvî. The order is not merely to hand over a substitute: its root carries the sense of bringing back what belongs to her. The return extends across the whole account, including the years she was away.
ALSO GROWS
shav: Returned; turned back.
שָׁב
This basic form makes the motion inside “restore” visible: something comes back to its rightful place.
teshuvah: Return; turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun carries the same return into the idea of a changed direction, echoing the movement from absence back to what is hers.
תְּבוּאַת
tevu'at
GROWS FROM
בוא
bo
To come or enter.
The word for the field’s produce grows from a root meaning “come”: it is what comes in from the ground. The king’s order includes not only the land’s earlier yield but what came in throughout her absence.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come; to enter.
בּוֹא
This is the root verb behind the produce word, making the harvest’s sense of “coming in” audible.
mavo: An entrance; an approach.
מָבוֹא
This related word also describes what comes in, connecting the field’s yield to the root’s wider language of arrival.
THE PATTERN
Restoration can reach beyond the original loss to include the multiplied or accumulated measure of what was lost.
And the LORD returned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD added to all that was Job's, twice over.And I will make whole for you the years that the locust has eaten, the lapper, the gnawer, and the shearer, my great army which I sent among you.And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of what I have to the emptied, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I give back fourfold."THE THREAD
A Song of degrees. When the LORD turned again the return of Zion, we were like dreamers.“Turned again” comes from שׁוּב (shuv), the same root behind the order to restore. The psalm opens the verse into a wider return: what seemed lost can come back so unexpectedly that it feels like a dream.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us