What Does 2 Samuel 16:20 Mean?
Then Absalom said to Ahithophel, Give counsel among yourselves. What shall we do?
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 said Absalom to Ahithophel, Give counsel among you what we shall do.THE KEY
The action begins before anyone moves: it begins in the counsel shaping what comes next.
THE MEANING
A next move is already taking shape in the counsel gathered around it. The question “what shall we do?” shows that deliberation gives action its first form.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a decision begins only when someone acts dissolves here: counsel is already forming the action.
THE ROOT
עֵצָה
ʿēṣāh
GROWS FROM
יעץ
to advise, deliberate, or form a plan
The root links counsel to the counselor: deliberation is carried by the people giving it, not by an abstract force. Here, the group is asked to furnish its own plan, so the action is already being formed before it is carried out.
ALSO GROWS
yāʿaṣ: to advise or counsel
יָעַץ
The verb names the act of giving direction that the group is being asked to undertake.
yōʿēṣ: counselor or adviser
יוֹעֵץ
This branch shows that counsel is bound to the people who offer it.
ʿēṣāh: counsel, advice, or plan
עֵצָה
The same word can name both advice and the plan taking shape through it.
THE PATTERN
A course of action takes its first shape in the counsel that precedes it.
Without counsel, plans are broken, but in a multitude of counselors they stand.Woe to the stiff-shouldered children, says the LORD, who take counsel but not from me, and who cover with a covering but not from my breath, that they may add falling short to falling short.Or what king, going to clash with another king in war, does not first sit down and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?THE THREAD
Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.Psalm 1:1 uses the same Hebrew word עֵצָה (ʿēṣāh, counsel), linking the advice requested here to a path a person may walk. It makes the source of counsel visible as part of the next step: “what shall we do?” already carries the influence of those whose direction is received.
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