What Does 2 Samuel 24:15 Mean?
So the LORD sent a plague upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
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
So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “sent” is shalach, which carries the sense of sending forth and releasing, so the verse places the pestilence directly under the LORD’s agency.
THE MEANING
The verse names the LORD as the sender of pestilence through Israel, from morning until the appointed time, and counts seventy thousand dead from Dan to Beer-sheba. Its measured span does not soften the violence: the full reach and the death toll stand together in one sentence.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
vayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send, send forth, release, or let go.
English “sent” can sound like mere motion, while שלח also carries the sense of sending forth or releasing. Here the LORD is explicitly the sender and pestilence is what is sent, placing agency directly inside the verse.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: To send or send forth.
שָׁלַח
This is the verb used in the verse: the pestilence is sent into Israel.
shilleach: To send away, dismiss, or release.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This form makes visible the root’s release sense, which gives added force to the account of pestilence moving through the land.
shaliach: A messenger or emissary; one who is sent.
שָׁלִיחַ
The noun preserves the root’s sense of something sent under an agent’s authority.
מוֹעֵד
mo'ed
GROWS FROM
יעד
Appoint or designate; set a time or meeting.
“appointed time” in this verse is mo'ed. “Time appointed” carries the sense of a designated time, not just an unspecified stretch of hours. The verse marks the pestilence’s duration with a stated endpoint while leaving the death toll fully visible.
ALSO GROWS
ya'ad: To appoint or designate.
יָעַד
This verb names the act of setting a time, which gives “appointed” its sense of a marked boundary.
mo'adim: Appointed times; seasons.
מוֹעֲדִים
This plural preserves the sense of times set apart or designated, echoing the verse’s bounded interval.
THE PATTERN
Scripture narrates divine judgment through death named plainly and, where given, counted directly.
And it came to be that at midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of the Great House who settled on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the pit, and all the firstborn of the cattle.Now those who died in the striking were fourteen thousand and seven hundred, apart from those who died about the word of Korah.And at once the messenger of the LORD struck him, because he did not give God the weight, and he was eaten by worms and breathed out his last.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to part the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for appointed times, and for days and years."The word translated “seasons” is מוֹעֲדִים, from the same יעד family as “appointed” in this verse. The connection presents the duration here as a designated time with a stated boundary.
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