What Does 2 Chronicles 15:3 Mean in the King James?
Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law.
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 verse names one fracture three ways: the absence of God, a teacher, and the instruction they share a root for directing.
THE MEANING
This speaks now wherever a community is without the true God, without a voice carrying instruction, and without the instruction itself. The repeated “without” binds these losses together: the Hebrew words for “teaching” and “law” share a root meaning to direct and instruct.
THE ROOT
תּוֹרָה
torah
GROWS FROM
ירה
To throw or cast; in a causative form, to point out, direct, or instruct.
The Hebrew word for “teaching” in “teaching priest” comes from this same root. English makes the priest and the law sound like separate supports, while Hebrew joins the teacher’s work and the instruction itself through the shared idea of direction.
ALSO GROWS
moreh: Teacher or instructor.
מוֹרֶה
This is the word translated “teaching” in the verse; it shares its root with Torah, linking the teacher directly to the instruction.
yarah: To throw or cast; also to direct or instruct.
יָרָה
The concrete sense of aiming or directing gives instruction the feel of a course set before someone.
אֱמֶת
emet
GROWS FROM
אמן
Firm, steady, reliable.
“True” here carries the sense of what is firm and reliable. Its root also gives the language of trust, so the verse’s first absence is a loss of dependable ground, alongside the loss of teachers and instruction.
ALSO GROWS
aman: To be firm, steady, or confirmed.
אָמַן
This is the root’s basic sense, showing the reliability carried by “true.”
emunah: Trust or steadfastness.
אֱמוּנָה
This related word connects what is reliable with the trust that can rest on it.
THE PATTERN
When access to divine instruction grows scarce, the absence reaches both the people who teach and the people who need to hear.
And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision.Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?THE THREAD
They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar.The Hebrew verb rendered “teach” and the word rendered “law” both grow from ירה (yarah, to direct or instruct). That root makes the teaching priest and Torah in this verse two expressions of the same movement: instruction carried by a teacher and given voice among the people.
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