What Does 2 Samuel 17:13 Mean?
If he is gathered into a city, then all Israel will carry cords to that city, and we will drag it into the river, until not even one pebble is found there.
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
Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the river, until there be not one small stone found there.THE KEY
The Hebrew imagines a city’s erasure as a collective burden: everyone lifts and carries it until even a pebble is gone.
THE MEANING
The verse gives annihilation its full physical scale: ropes encircle a city, and a whole people carry it into the river until not even a pebble remains. The threat includes the place itself and its smallest trace.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that taking a city means only changing who controls it; here, victory is imagined as the city’s complete disappearance.
THE ROOT
וּנְשָׂאֵהוּ
u-nesa'ehu
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
to lift, carry, or bear
“carry cords” in this verse is u-nesa'ehu. The KJV’s “draw” carries the movement, while נשא (nasa, “lift, carry, bear”) also carries the weight of what is moved. The city becomes a burden borne by the people who erase it.
ALSO GROWS
massa: a load or burden
מַשָּׂא
This branch makes the city’s removal legible as something heavy that is borne.
nasi: a leader, chief, or prince; one elevated
נָשִׂיא
The same root can describe someone lifted up; here, the whole people lift the city itself toward its destruction.
THE PATTERN
Violence reaches for total conquest when it measures its success by what remains, down to the last stone.
And you shall gather all the spoil of it into the midst of its wide place, and shall burn the city with fire, and all its spoil whole, for the LORD your God; and it shall be a mound for the ages; it shall not be built again.Jesus said to them, Do you not see all these things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone here is let go upon another stone that is not loosened.And a strong messenger lifts a stone like a great millstone, and throws it into the sea, saying, With a rush shall Babylon the great city be thrown down, and shall never be found again.THE THREAD
He feeds his flock like a shepherd, gathers the lambs in his arm, carries them against his chest, and gently leads the ones who nurse.Isaiah uses the same root, נשא (nasa, “carry, bear”), for lambs held close in a shepherd’s arms. The root names the act of carrying; here it bears a city toward destruction, while there it carries the vulnerable in care.
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