What Does 2 Chronicles 17:9 Mean in the King James?
And they taught in Judah, and had the book of the law of the LORD with them, and went about throughout all the cities of Judah, and taught the people.
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 word for “teach” grows from the same root as “learn,” so teaching here is learning carried from town to town until it belongs to the people.
THE MEANING
Instruction reaches you as something carried into the places you live and shared among people. Learning moves through the whole community, and the written words become teaching in the people’s midst.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred instruction belongs only in one place or to a few: the teachers travel through every city and teach the people.
THE ROOT
וַיְלַמְּדוּ
vaylammedu
GROWS FROM
למד
לָמַד (lamad): learn; in the Piel teaching form, teach.
וַיְלַמְּדוּ (vaylammedu, they taught) is a Piel form of לָמַד (lamad, learn). Hebrew holds teaching and learning under one root: what is taught is meant to become learning among the people.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: to learn
לָמַד
This is the root’s basic sense, joining the learner’s process to the teachers’ work.
melammed: one who teaches
מְלַמֵּד
This form names the teacher through the same root used for the act of teaching in the verse.
talmid: learner, student
תַּלְמִיד
The learner’s name shares למד, making the people taught the other side of the same root.
סֵפֶר
sefer
GROWS FROM
ספר
סָפַר (safar): count, recount, relate.
סֵפֶר (sefer, book) belongs to the ספר (s-p-r) family of counting, recounting, and telling. In this verse, the book travels so its written instruction can be recounted as shared teaching.
ALSO GROWS
safar: to count, recount
סָפַר
This verb shows the root’s movement from marking things out to recounting them.
sofer: scribe
סוֹפֵר
The scribe records what can then be carried and taught.
sippur: account, story
סִפּוּר
A story is something recounted, linking the written book with what is shared aloud.
THE PATTERN
Instruction becomes communal when it is carried into everyday places and passed on so others can understand.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.THE THREAD
Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.The form לַמְּדֵנִי (lammedeni, teach me) comes from למד (lamad, learn/teach), the same root as “they taught” here. The movement through every city becomes personal in this request: instruction reaches a people by becoming learning in each reader.
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