What Does 2 Samuel 13:23 Mean?
And it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baalhazor, which is beside Ephraim, and Absalom called all the king's sons.
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 it came to pass after two full years, that Absalom had sheepshearers in Baal-hazor, which is beside Ephraim: and Absalom invited all the king’s sons.THE KEY
The shearing feast gives Absalom’s summons the look of celebration while two years of grievance carry the gathering toward violence.
THE MEANING
Two full years pass, but Absalom’s grievance remains active as his invitation gathers the king’s sons beneath the ordinary cover of a shearing feast. The scene holds danger that becomes explicit in the next verse. You meet the tension before the violence arrives: a welcome can carry an intention its guests cannot see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Time passing does not mean the danger has passed; unresolved harm can remain active beneath an ordinary welcome.
THE ROOT
גֹזְזִים
gozezîm
GROWS FROM
גזז
To shear or cut off fleece.
“sheepshearers” in this verse is gozezîm. The Hebrew word keeps the act inside the job title: fleece is being cut away as the king’s sons are brought together. Against the violence that follows, this ordinary cutting becomes an unsettling surface image beside a gathering that turns lethal.
ALSO GROWS
gazaz: To shear, cut fleece.
גָּזַז
This is the verb behind the sheepshearers’ work, making the act of cutting part of the scene’s wording.
gez: Fleece, especially shorn wool.
גֵּז
The noun names what the workers remove, keeping the gathering grounded in the season’s visible abundance.
אַבְשָׁלוֹם
Avshalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole, complete, or at peace.
Absalom’s name joins “father” with the שׁלם family of wholeness and peace. Here he gathers the king’s sons while carrying a grievance toward violence, and the name’s promise of peace stands in sharp tension with the scene.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Peace, wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
The name’s second element carries the sense of peace that the gathering does not embody.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the contrast sharper: the family gathers in one place, but wholeness is absent from the scene.
וַיִּקְרָא
wayyiqra
GROWS FROM
קרא
To call, summon, or proclaim.
“called” in this verse is wayyiqra. The verb translated “invited” is literally a calling: Absalom summons every one of the king’s sons. The word foregrounds the call itself, while the danger carried by it remains hidden from those who answer.
ALSO GROWS
qara: To call, summon, or proclaim.
קָרָא
This is the verb’s basic sense, showing the force of Absalom’s invitation as a summons.
miqra: A convocation or assembly; also a reading.
מִקְרָא
This related noun connects calling with gathering, illuminating how the invitation brings the king’s sons together.
THE PATTERN
A host’s summons is revealed by what the gathering is made to serve.
Shall I then take my bread, and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men whom I have not known, from where they come?Now Absalom had commanded his servants, saying, Perceive now when Amnon's heart is good with wine, and when I say to you, Strike Amnon, then kill him, fear not. Have I not commanded you? Take hold, and be firm, and be valiant.But he said to him, A certain man made a great supper, and called many.THE THREAD
And there was a man in Maon whose possessions were in Carmel. The man was very great, and he had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats, and he was shearing his sheep in Carmel.The same Hebrew root גזז names sheep shearing here and in 1 Samuel 25:2. There, as here, shearing marks a season of abundance and a gathering of people; Absalom uses that familiar setting for a summons carrying danger.
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