What Does 2 Chronicles 13:9 Mean in the King James?

Have ye not cast out the priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and have made you priests after the manner of the nations of other lands? so that whosoever cometh to consecrate himself with a young bullock and seven rams, the same may be a priest of them that are no gods.

2 Chronicles 13:9 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The verse’s “consecrate” is literally “fill his hand”: a full ritual can install a priest without making its object of worship a god.

THE MEANING

A rite can install a priest, but office and cost cannot make the object served real. The verse holds the full ceremony beside its blunt verdict: “no gods.”

WHAT THIS UNDOES

A costly rite and a recognized religious title prove that what is served is divine.

THE ROOT

לְמַלֵּא יָדוֹ

lemallēʾ yādô

GROWS FROM

מלא

m-l-ʾ

fill; be full

The phrase rendered “consecrate” pictures filling a hand, an idiom for installing someone in priestly service. The same root names the formal “fillings” of ordination, while this verse shows that filling the hand and appointing a priest do not make the object served a god.

ALSO GROWS

maleʾ: be full; full

מָלֵא

The root’s basic image is fullness; here the idiom makes priestly installation concrete as a hand filled for service.

milluʾim: ordination rites; literally, “fillings”

מִלֻּאִים

This priestly-investiture term uses the same root, linking the verse’s phrase to the formal rite of appointment.

THE PATTERN

People can manufacture religious offices and objects, but making them does not make their claimed divine reality true.

And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi.

1 Kings 12:31 · KJVThe verse shows religious office being assembled through human choice, much like the priestly appointments described here.

Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.

Psalm 115:4 · KJVAn object made by human hands can be treated as divine without possessing the reality its makers assign to it.

Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands:

Acts 19:26 · KJVThe phrase “no gods” echoes this verse’s distinction between a made object of devotion and actual divinity.

THE THREAD

And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and put the bonnets on them: and the priest’s office shall be theirs for a perpetual statute: and thou shalt consecrate Aaron and his sons.

Exodus 29:9 · KJV

The same Hebrew idiom, “fill the hand,” names priestly installation in both verses. Here it exposes the hinge: a rite can appoint an officeholder, while the one being served is still called “no gods.”

Read the SDV Bible.

Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.

Get Selah Verse

The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us