What Does 2 Chronicles 10:14 Mean in the King James?
And answered them after the advice of the young men, saying, My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add thereto: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “made heavy” also gives the language of weight and honor: here, authority makes itself felt as a load.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks when a plea for relief is met with a promise of greater force. The burden is deliberately increased, and correction is sharpened into a threat. Power exposes its nature by the weight it chooses to place on another.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a leader’s authority naturally protects the people beneath it dissolves here: power can answer a plea for relief by increasing the burden.
THE ROOT
הִכְבִּיד
hikbid
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry honor or significance.
The verb הִכְבִּיד (hikbid, “made heavy”) belongs to the root כבד, whose branches include both heaviness and honor. Here authority becomes physical weight: the king’s power is experienced as a load imposed on the people.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
It names the burden the speaker says he will increase.
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
It reveals the shared root’s connection between weight and what is treated as significant.
kibbed: To honor or make weighty.
כִּבֵּד
It shows that the same root can describe giving weight to someone, while this verse describes placing weight upon people.
יִסַּר
yissar
GROWS FROM
יסר
To discipline, correct, or instruct through correction.
The verb יִסַּר (yissar, “chastised”) shares its root with words for correction and instruction. The whips and scorpions make the threat unmistakably violent: the language of correction is joined to the escalation of pain.
ALSO GROWS
musar: Instruction, discipline, or correction.
מוּסָר
It shows the root’s connection to correction, a word the speaker here wields alongside instruments of violence.
yissurim: Chastening or affliction.
יִסּוּרִים
It carries the root toward the suffering that this threat makes explicit.
אוֹסִיף
ʾosif
GROWS FROM
יסף
To add, increase, or do more.
אוֹסִיף (ʾosif, “I will add”) belongs to the root יסף, which carries the sense of addition and increase. The speaker does not describe a separate burden: he promises to add to the same yoke, making escalation the policy.
ALSO GROWS
yasaf: To add or increase.
יָסַף
It states the basic action behind the promise to intensify the yoke.
Yosef: He adds.
יוֹסֵף
The name carries the same root of addition that shapes the speaker’s threat.
THE PATTERN
Unchecked authority makes people carry burdens imposed for its own ends.
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.THE THREAD
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.The yoke in this verse is made heavier by the one who rules; here, the same image turns toward an easy yoke and a light burden. The contrast shows that authority does not have to make its weight felt as oppression.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us