What Does 2 Samuel 23:26 Mean?
Helez the Paltite, Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite.
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
Helez the Paltite, Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite,THE KEY
“Paltite” carries the Hebrew root of escape, so a bare name in this list quietly holds a story of survival.
THE MEANING
This line names people in relation to place and kin: Helez is called the Paltite, while Ira is identified through his father and his town. “Paltite” echoes a Hebrew word-family for escape and survival, leaving that trace inside a name of belonging.
THE ROOT
הַפַּלְטִי
ha-Palṭî
GROWS FROM
פלט
p-l-ṭ
To escape or slip away; to bring out of danger.
“Paltite” belongs to a Hebrew word-family of escape and survival. The place-name carries that meaning within the verse’s brief identification of Helez.
ALSO GROWS
pālîṭ: One who escaped; a survivor.
פָּלִיט
It makes the survival echo in “Paltite” audible as a person who has come through danger.
pĕlêṭāh: Escape; deliverance; a remnant.
פְּלֵיטָה
This branch gives the root a wider sense: what escapes can also be what remains.
עִקֵּשׁ
ʿIqqēš
GROWS FROM
עקש
ʿ-q-š
To bend or twist; to be crooked.
The name Ikkesh belongs to a Hebrew word-family for what is twisted or crooked. That meaning stays compressed in the name as Ira is also identified through his father and town.
ALSO GROWS
ʿiqqēš: Crooked; perverse.
עִקֵּשׁ
This form shows the word-shape carried by Ikkesh’s name.
ʿiqqĕšût: Crookedness; perversity.
עִקְּשׁוּת
The abstract form makes explicit the quality held in the name’s root.
THE PATTERN
Scripture preserves a person’s identity through names that locate them among kin and place.
Ira the son of Ikkesh the Tekoite, Abiezer the Anathothite,And Saul said to him, Whose son are you, youth? And David answered, I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years old, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, who was the son of Heli.THE THREAD
And there came one who had slipped free, and told Abram the Hebrew; for he settled in the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol, and brother of Aner; and these were bound to Abram by covenant.“Escaped” translates הַפָּלִיט (ha-pālîṭ, the one who escaped), from פלט (p-l-ṭ), the root carried by “Paltite.” In Genesis the survivor brings news; here the same root remains quietly inside Helez’s name of origin.
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