What Does 2 Chronicles 12:13 Mean in the King James?
So king Rehoboam strengthened himself in Jerusalem, and reigned: for Rehoboam was one and forty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city which the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. And his mother’s name was Naamah an Ammonitess.
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
Rehoboam strengthens himself in Jerusalem, but the city’s defining nature is the name the LORD has set there.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two kinds of strength together: Rehoboam makes himself strong, while Jerusalem bears the name placed there by the LORD’s choice. The city’s identity reaches beyond the ruler who occupies it; its center is the one whose name dwells there. That distinction speaks now wherever self-made strength and received identity meet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that whoever holds power gets to define a place. Rehoboam reigns there, but the verse locates Jerusalem’s deeper identity in the LORD’s name.
THE ROOT
שֵׁם
shem
GROWS FROM
שם
Name, reputation, or identity made known; here, the nature represented by the one whose name is set in the city.
In the Hebrew phrase שְׁמוֹ שָׁם (shemo sham, “his name there”), “name” and “there” share the same consonants, שם, though they are distinct words with different vowels and meanings. The sound-and-script echo ties the named identity to its place: Jerusalem is marked by whose name is there.
ALSO GROWS
shemo: His name
שְׁמוֹ
This possessive form is the word used in the verse, joining the name directly to the one whose nature it represents.
shemot: Names
שֵׁמוֹת
The plural form keeps the same noun visible as something that can be spoken, remembered, and made known.
וַיִּתְחַזֵּק
vayyitḥazzēq
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥ-z-q
Be strong, strengthen, hold fast, or prevail.
“strengthened himself” in this verse is vayyitḥazzēq. The verb describes Rehoboam making himself strong. Set beside Jerusalem’s identity as the place bearing the LORD’s name, it shows personal strength operating within a nature the king does not create.
ALSO GROWS
ḥazaq: Strong
חָזָק
The adjective names the quality that Rehoboam’s action brings forward.
ḥizzēq: Strengthen, make firm
חִזֵּק
This form shows the root as an act that makes something firm, as Rehoboam does to himself.
heḥĕziq: Hold fast, maintain, or take hold
הֶחֱזִיק
This branch reveals strength as holding a position, not merely possessing force.
THE PATTERN
The name set in a dwelling marks the nature present there, beyond whoever rules or enters it.
But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come:That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place.I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.THE THREAD
But unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come:The same Hebrew word for “name,” שֵׁם (shem), appears in both verses, in the phrase about putting the LORD’s name in a chosen place. Deuteronomy states the pattern directly; Chronicles places Jerusalem’s identity beside the king’s reign, showing the name-bearing city as more than a royal seat.
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