What Does 2 Samuel 11:18 Mean?
Then Joab sent and told David all the words of the war.
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
Then Joab sent and told David all the things concerning the war;THE KEY
Hebrew calls the war’s “things” its words: the conflict reaches David as a report carried outward.
THE MEANING
What happens beyond your sight becomes present through a report that reaches you; here, the full account of the war travels from Joab to David. News moves outward, then becomes known through the words that carry it.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
wayyišlaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
to send forth, send away, or release
“sent” in this verse is wayyišlaḥ. The root carries both sending and release: Joab sets the report in motion away from himself and toward David. The verse shows news as something carried outward until it reaches its hearer.
ALSO GROWS
shaliach: envoy; one who is sent
שָׁלִיחַ
The envoy makes visible the root’s movement: a sender’s purpose travels through someone sent onward.
shilluaḥ: sending away; dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch preserves the root’s sense of release, the outward movement that begins with Joab’s message.
דִּבְרֵי
divrei
GROWS FROM
דבר
to speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or thing
The “things” concerning the war are literally its divrei, its words or matters. English makes the report’s content sound like objects, while Hebrew keeps it within the field of speech.
ALSO GROWS
davar: word; matter; thing
דָּבָר
This noun holds “word” and “thing” together, revealing that the war’s matters arrive as spoken report.
dibber: to speak
דִּבֵּר
The verb shares the same root, linking the matters being reported to the act of telling them.
THE PATTERN
A message carries what happens in one place beyond it, making the event present to a distant hearer.
Then they said to one another, We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we keep silent. If we wait until the morning light, crookedness will find us. So now come, and let us go and tell the king's house.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.But Jesus did not allow him, and said to him, "Go to your house, to your own, and tell them how great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you."THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.“Things” here is דִּבְרֵי (divrei), from the same root דבר (davar) as Isaiah’s “word.” Isaiah widens the connection: what is sent forth as speech carries the sender’s purpose to where it is received.
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