What Does 2 Samuel 22:46 Mean?
The children of strangers wither, and tremble out of their enclosures.
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
Strangers shall fade away, and they shall be afraid out of their close places.THE KEY
The Hebrew names the refuge as an enclosure, so the shock is that those who hide behind closed walls still come out afraid.
THE MEANING
Strangers are fading, and the people behind their defenses come out afraid. The verse shows that a stronghold can enclose a force without making it endure; walls cannot keep its fear from appearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a fortified position guarantees mastery: those inside the close places still emerge in fear.
THE ROOT
נֵכָר
nēkhār
GROWS FROM
נכר
Foreignness or unfamiliarity; to mark or regard as foreign.
“strangers” in this verse is nēkhār. The phrase בְּנֵי נֵכָר means “sons of foreignness.” The same consonants can describe recognizing or treating something as foreign, so the word carries both an identity and the act of marking someone as outside.
ALSO GROWS
nokrī: Foreigner; one who is alien or unfamiliar.
נָכְרִי
This branch makes the verse’s foreignness a quality of being outside the group, not merely a distant location.
hitnakkēr: To act as a stranger, disown, or conceal one’s identity.
הִתְנַכֵּר
The same consonants show foreignness as something that can be enacted or recognized, adding force to the strangers’ sudden fading.
מִמִּסְגְּרוֹתֵיהֶם
mimmisgeroteihem
GROWS FROM
סגר
To shut, close, or enclose.
“enclosures” in this verse is mimmisgeroteihem. The word for their “close places” comes from the root for shutting or enclosing. English can make these sound like mere locations; Hebrew keeps the closure inside the word, making their emergence part of the image.
ALSO GROWS
sāgar: To shut, close, or enclose.
סָגַר
This verb exposes the action held inside the noun for their close places: they are places shut around those within.
misgeret: An enclosure, frame, or setting.
מִסְגֶּרֶת
This related noun preserves the sense of a boundary or enclosing frame, clarifying the stronghold image in the verse.
THE PATTERN
A closed place can conceal people for a time, but it cannot guarantee what comes next.
That you may say to the bound ones, Come out, and to those in the darkness, Uncover yourselves. They shall graze along the roads, and their pasture shall be on every bare height.And suddenly there came a great shaking, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and at once all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were untied.THE THREAD
And those who came in, male and female of all flesh, came as God had commanded him, and the LORD shut him in.Genesis uses the same root, סגר, when “the LORD shut him in” aboard the ark. There, enclosure shelters Noah; here, the word describes strongholds from which the strangers emerge afraid, showing that a closed place can shelter or contain without making its occupants invulnerable.
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