What Does 2 Chronicles 17:6 Mean in the King James?
And his heart was lifted up in the ways of the LORD: moreover he took away the high places and groves out of Judah.
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 heart rises in the LORD’s way while the high places come down: inward elevation and outward clearing stand together.
THE MEANING
When your heart rises in the LORD’s ways, that movement reaches into the landscape around you: the verse places it beside the removal of high places and groves. Inner direction and what remains standing outside are held together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inward devotion can remain untouched by competing altars: here, the heart raised in the LORD’s ways stands beside the removal of high places and groves.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגְבַּהּ
wayyigbah
GROWS FROM
גבה
Rise, be high.
“lifted up” in this verse is wayyigbah. Hebrew uses וַיִּגְבַּהּ (wayyigbah, rose or was lifted) for the heart, but בָּמוֹת (bāmôt, high places) for the shrines; these are distinct words and roots despite their shared English image. The verse sets the heart’s upward movement alongside the removal of raised worship sites, so the contrast is in the scene rather than a shared etymology.
ALSO GROWS
gābōah: High, lofty.
גָּבֹהַּ
This branch carries the same upward quality the verse applies to the heart.
gōbah: Height, loftiness.
גֹּבַהּ
It gives a noun for being high, while the verse locates that height in the heart’s direction.
דַּרְכֵי
darkhei
GROWS FROM
דרך
Tread, take steps along a path.
The word translated “ways” belongs to the root of דָּרַךְ (dārak, to tread): a way is a path made real by walking it. The heart’s rise is tied to a lived direction, and the clearing around it makes that direction visible.
ALSO GROWS
derek: Way, path, road.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the singular form behind the verse’s “ways,” giving the LORD’s way the shape of a path.
dārak: Tread, step, walk.
דָּרַךְ
The verb reveals that a way is not merely an idea; it is what the feet repeatedly tread.
THE PATTERN
The heart’s direction becomes visible in what it treasures, preserves, and casts down.
He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;THE THREAD
I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart.Both verses pair the heart with the LORD’s way, using דֶּרֶךְ (derek, way or path), from דָּרַךְ (dārak, to tread). Psalm 119:32 adds an enlarged heart, showing the way as a path walked with an inner spaciousness.
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