What Does 2 Samuel 17:18 Mean?
But a lad saw them and told Absalom. The two of them went away quickly, and came to a man's house in Bahurim, which had a well in his courtyard; and there they went down.
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
Nevertheless a lad saw them, and told Absalom: but they went both of them away quickly, and came to a man’s house in Bahurim, which had a well in his court; whither they went down.THE KEY
After being seen, the men escape by changing levels: they descend into a well inside a house.
THE MEANING
You can be seen and reported without being captured. The two men move quickly into a house, then down into its courtyard well; their route out of view leads beneath the surface.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being seen means the pursuer already has you.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּרְדוּ
vayeredu
GROWS FROM
ירד
to descend, go down
“there they went down” in this verse is vayeredu. The verse’s “went down” is literal, but its root also appears in the name Yarden, the Jordan, traditionally connected with “descend.” Here that downward movement carries the men out of open view: the escape depends on where they go, not how far.
ALSO GROWS
horid: bring down
הוֹרִיד
This causative form shows the same root can describe someone moving another downward, adding agency to the root’s basic movement.
Yarden: Jordan; traditionally connected to “descend”
יַרְדֵּן
The river’s name carries the same downward motion, echoing the direction the men take into the well.
THE PATTERN
When danger closes in, life is preserved through hidden routes, shelter, and timely movement.
And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of reeds, and smeared it with bitumen and pitch, and set the child in it, and set it among the rushes on the lip of the river.So Michal lowered David through a window, and he went, and fled, and slipped away.When they had withdrawn, look, a messenger of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Rise, take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word, for Herod will seek the young child to make him perish.THE THREAD
I went down to the broken places of the mountains; the earth, with its bars, closed about me for the ages. Yet you brought up my living soul from the pit, O LORD my God.Jonah’s “went down” comes from the same Hebrew root ירד as “they went down” here. In Samuel, descent takes the men into concealment; Jonah carries the same downward movement into the depths, then speaks of being brought up.
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