What Does 2 Samuel 20:18 Mean?
Then she spoke, saying, They used to speak in old time, saying, They shall surely ask at Abel, and so the matter was used up.
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 she spake, saying, They were wont to speak in old time, saying, They shall surely ask counsel at Abel: and so they ended the matter.THE KEY
At Abel, whose name evokes a meadow, the repeated Hebrew verb “ask” makes inquiry the way a matter reaches completion.
THE MEANING
When you bring a matter before people trusted to inquire deeply, the question itself can open a path to its conclusion. Here, asking counsel and ending the dispute stand together: inquiry is the hinge by which the matter becomes complete. Abel (אָבֵל, ʾĀvēl, “meadow”) adds the image of a place where life can take root.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Counsel only delays a decision. This verse binds asking counsel to bringing a matter to its conclusion.
THE ROOT
שָׁאֹל יְשָׁאֲלוּ
shāʾōl yishʾălū
GROWS FROM
שאל
Ask, inquire, or request.
The Hebrew repeats the verb with emphasis, “asking, they ask”; the idea of counsel lives inside that act of inquiry. At Abel, the question is carried into shared discernment, and the matter reaches its end.
ALSO GROWS
shaʾal: To ask, inquire, or request.
שָׁאַל
The same verb appears in the verse’s doubled expression, giving the asking special force.
sheʾelah: A request or question.
שְׁאֵלָה
This noun shows the root’s reach from the act of asking to the question brought forward for an answer.
הֵתַמּוּ
hētammū
GROWS FROM
תמם
Be complete, finished, or brought to an end.
“the matter was used up” in this verse is hētammū. The verse pairs persistent asking with completion: the matter is not just discussed but brought to its finished point. The root can carry the sense of wholeness as well as ending.
ALSO GROWS
tamim: Complete, whole, or sound.
תָּמִים
This branch lets “ended” carry the added shade of a matter brought to completion.
tom: Integrity or completeness.
תֹּם
It echoes the verse’s movement from an open question to a matter brought to a settled finish.
THE PATTERN
A matter can reach completion when people bring it into shared inquiry.
And let them judge the people at all times; and it shall be that every great word they bring to you, but every small word they shall judge, so it will lighten from upon you, and they shall carry the burden with you.Without counsel, plans are broken, but in a multitude of counselors they stand.For it seemed good to the Set-Apart Breath, and to us, to lay upon you no greater weight than these pressing things.THE THREAD
In Gibeon the LORD showed himself to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give you.The same Hebrew root, שאל, appears in the call to ask. At Abel, inquiry opens a path toward settling a matter; here, asking opens toward receiving what is needed.
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