What Does 2 Samuel 5:16 Mean?
And Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphalet.
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
And Elishama, and Eliada, and Eliphalet.THE KEY
Together, these names turn a bare list into a compressed claim: God hears, God knows, and God gives an exit.
THE MEANING
This line gathers three names into a living disclosure: God hears, God knows, and deliverance belongs to God’s nature. Being heard and known stands beside escape; the names hold these together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that distress means you are unheard, unknown, and therefore trapped is interrupted by these names: hearing, knowing, and escape are held together as God’s nature.
THE ROOT
אֱלִישָׁמָע
ʾĔlîšāmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שׁמע
Hear, listen, heed.
Elishama carries hearing inside the name: God hears. The same root can mean hearing that receives and responds, so the name holds more than sound reaching an ear; it names attention that answers.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen, heed.
שָׁמַע
This verb is the seed in Elishama: hearing belongs to the name’s claim about God.
shemaʿ: Hear and respond.
שֵׁמַע
This form brings the root’s responsive sense into view: hearing can carry a response within it.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings; something heard and conveyed.
שְׁמוּעָה
The branch shows how what is heard can become known and carried onward.
אֱלִיָדָע
ʾĔlîyādāʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
Know, recognize, perceive.
Eliada names God as one who knows. This root can describe recognition and personal knowing, so the name suggests more than information held at a distance: the person is known.
ALSO GROWS
yadaʿ: Know, recognize, perceive.
יָדַע
The verb gives Eliada its central claim: God knows.
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun shows knowing as something held and understood, not merely a passing glance.
maddaʿ: Knowledge, understanding.
מַדָּע
This branch further opens the root’s range, while Eliada makes that knowing personal in the name.
אֱלִיפֶלֶט
ʾĔlîp̄eleṭ
GROWS FROM
פלט
Escape, slip away, survive.
Eliphalet carries escape within God’s name: deliverance is pictured as getting out and surviving. The name places that movement beside hearing and knowing, so the list moves from attention toward release from confinement.
ALSO GROWS
palat: Escape, slip away, bring to safety.
פָּלַט
This verb gives the name its movement out of danger or confinement.
palit: A survivor, one who has escaped.
פָּלִיט
The branch names the person who comes through and remains.
peletah: Escape, survival, remnant.
פְּלֵיטָה
This noun makes escape an outcome that remains after danger.
THE PATTERN
God’s attention is shown as hearing the cry, knowing the trouble, and bringing the distressed out.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.And this is the open speech we hold toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Elishama contains שׁמע (shamaʿ, hear and heed), the same root beneath “heareth.” The verse pairs that hearing with deliverance, bringing into view the escape also carried by Eliphalet’s name.
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