What Does 2 Chronicles 13:17 Mean in the King James?
And Abijah and his people slew them with a great slaughter: so there fell down slain of Israel five hundred thousand chosen men.
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 repeats נכה (nākâ, “strike”) in both “slew” and “great slaughter,” making the mass death read as one escalating blow.
THE MEANING
This verse holds mass killing in plain view: Abijah and his people strike, and five hundred thousand chosen men of Israel lie slain. Abijah (אֲבִיָּה, ʾĂvîyāh, “Yah is my father”) is named as the victor, but that name does not explain or soften the violence the verse states.
THE ROOT
וַיַּכּוּם
wayyakkûm
GROWS FROM
נכה
to strike or smite
“slew / great slaughter” in this verse is wayyakkûm. The Hebrew uses this root for both the act of killing and the “great slaughter” that follows it. English separates the action from its result; the repeated root holds them together as one blow and its devastation.
ALSO GROWS
nākâ: to strike or smite
נָכָה
The verb behind “slew” gives the killing its physical force.
makkāh: a blow, wound, or plague
מַכָּה
The noun translated “slaughter” comes from the same root, naming the devastation as the blow itself.
בָּחוּר
bāḥûr
GROWS FROM
בחר
to choose or select
“chosen men” in this verse is bāḥûr. “Chosen” belongs to the language of selection. The verse counts selected men of Israel among the slain, keeping their identity in view within the overwhelming number.
ALSO GROWS
bāḥar: to choose or select
בָּחַר
This verb is the root’s act of choosing, echoed in the description of the fallen men.
bāḥîr: chosen or select one
בָּחִיר
This related form preserves the sense of selection carried by “chosen men.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture’s accounts of force sometimes keep its human cost visible by naming the dead, their number, or the bodies left behind.
And he smote Moab, and measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive. And so the Moabites became David’s servants, and brought gifts.So that all which fell that day of Benjamin were twenty and five thousand men that drew the sword; all these were men of valour.And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:THE THREAD
Thus saith the LORD, In this thou shalt know that I am the LORD: behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood.The same root, נכה (nākâ, “strike”), appears behind “slew” here and “smite” there. Exodus names the blow landing on water and turning it to blood; here the verse names the bodies and the dead.
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