What Does 2 Chronicles 15:6 Mean in the King James?
And nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity.
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 uses the language of crushing to show conflict moving both ways: each nation breaks another and is itself broken.
THE MEANING
The verse lays out violence that reproduces itself: nation crushes nation, and city crushes city. It also names God as the one who vexes them amid adversity, holding divine disruption and human ruin together in the same scene.
THE ROOT
כֻּתְּתוּ
kuttetu
GROWS FROM
כתת
כָּתַת (kātat): to beat, pound, or crush into pieces.
The verb behind “destroyed” carries the force of being hammered apart. The same root describes beaten olive oil and weapons beaten into tools; here that force falls on nations and cities, and the verse does not soften its violence.
ALSO GROWS
kāthith: Beaten or pounded; used to describe olive oil prepared for the lamp.
כָּתִית
The same root moves from the crushing of communities to the preparation of oil, making the force in “destroyed” tactile rather than abstract.
kittetu: They beat or hammered into pieces.
כִּתְּתוּ
Isaiah uses this form for swords turned into tools, showing the same root can name what is broken and what violence is made to relinquish.
THE PATTERN
When destabilization takes hold, conflict reproduces itself from one community to the next.
And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom.For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another.THE THREAD
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.The Hebrew verb כִּתְּתוּ (kittetu, they beat) in Isaiah comes from the same root כתת (kātat, to beat or crush) as “destroyed” here. In Isaiah, swords take the force of that beating and become tools; the root remains, while what is broken and what follows from it change.
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