What Does 2 Kings 9:35 Mean?
And they went to bury her, but they found no more of her than the skull, the feet, and the palms of her hands.
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 they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.THE KEY
The skull left here carries the same word that names Golgotha, the place of a skull.
THE MEANING
You meet the aftermath in blunt pieces: a skull, feet, and palms, with no whole body left to bury. The verse leaves the violence visible and names only what remains.
THE ROOT
הַגֻּלְגֹּלֶת
hagulgoleth
GROWS FROM
גלל
galal
To roll; to roll away.
The Hebrew גֻּלְגֹּלֶת (gulgoleth, “skull”) carries the rounded, rolling sound of גָּלַל (galal, “to roll”). English names the body part, while Hebrew also holds an image of roundness that resurfaces in מְגִלָּה (megillah, “scroll”), a thing rolled.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll or roll away.
גָּלַל
This verb is the seed behind the rolling image carried by the Hebrew word for skull.
megillah: A scroll; rolled writing.
מְגִלָּה
The same root names writing in its rolled form, another branch of the rolling image.
רַגְלַיִם
raglayim
GROWS FROM
רגל
ragal
To go on foot; to go about.
The Hebrew רַגְלַיִם (raglayim, “feet”) comes from רֶגֶל (regel, “foot”), a root that also yields מְרַגֵּל (meragel, “one who goes about; spy”). The feet remain as a trace of movement, while the word family links them to going about.
ALSO GROWS
regel: Foot.
רֶגֶל
The plural רַגְלַיִם (raglayim, “feet”) names the bodily part left among the remains.
meragel: One who goes about; spy.
מְרַגֵּל
This branch links the foot to going about, the movement that the remaining feet can only evoke.
THE PATTERN
The mortal body returns to dissolution, and scripture names that ending without disguise.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you turn back to the ground, for from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall turn back.All go to one place; all come from the dust, and all turn back to the dust.For all flesh is as grass, and all its weight is as the blossom of grass. The grass dries, and the blossom falls.THE THREAD
When they came to a place called Golgotha, the place of a skull,The Hebrew גֻּלְגֹּלֶת (gulgoleth, “skull”) and Aramaic גֻּלְגֹּלְתָּא (gulgolta, “skull”) are cognates. Matthew gives the same meaning in the place-name Golgotha: “a place of a skull.”
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