What Does 2 Samuel 12:14 Mean?
Yet because by this deed you have given the enemies of the LORD great cause to spurn, the child who is born to you also shall surely die.
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
Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.THE KEY
The same Hebrew root holds despising and blaspheming together, making public speech the audible branch of contempt.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a deed that gives the LORD’s enemies grounds to blaspheme beside the sentence that the child born to thee will die. It names both consequences plainly and does not turn the child’s death into a metaphor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a deed’s consequences stop with its doer: the LORD’s name becomes subject to public blasphemy, while a child dies.
THE ROOT
נִאֵץ
niʾēṣ
GROWS FROM
נאץ
n-ʾ-ṣ
To despise, spurn, or treat with contempt; when directed toward God, to blaspheme.
“great cause to spurn” in this verse is niʾēṣ. The Hebrew verb’s basic force is despising or spurning, the contempt that can become blasphemous speech. The verse connects the deed, its public reading, and speech against the LORD within one root-family.
ALSO GROWS
nāʾaṣ: To despise or spurn.
נָאַץ
This root sense shows the contempt carried by the blasphemy in the verse.
neʾāṣāh: Reproach or blasphemy.
נְאָצָה
This noun names contempt as spoken reproach, bringing the root’s inward scorn into public speech.
THE PATTERN
A deed can expose the name of God to public contempt through the way others read it.
And when they came to the nations, wherever they went, they pierced my set-apart name, when they said to them, These are the people of the LORD, and they went out of his land.Now therefore, what have I here, says the LORD, that my people is carried off for nothing? Those who rule over them make them howl, says the LORD, and continually, every day, my name is spurned.For the nature of God is spoken against among the nations through you, as it stands written.THE THREAD
Now therefore, what have I here, says the LORD, that my people is carried off for nothing? Those who rule over them make them howl, says the LORD, and continually, every day, my name is spurned.The verb rendered “blasphemed” in Isaiah is נָאַץ (nāʾaṣ), “to despise or spurn,” the same root behind “blaspheme” here. The shared root makes public blasphemy contempt voiced against the LORD.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us