What Does 2 Chronicles 18:26 Mean in the King James?
And say, Thus saith the king, Put this fellow in the prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until I return in peace.
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 king names his own return as peace while ordering pressure into another person’s daily bread and water.
THE MEANING
When a word threatens authority, power can shrink the speaker’s world to a cell and a ration of distress. The ruler’s anticipated wholeness stands beside another person’s imposed pressure, revealing a peace named from one side while suffering is borne on the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a ruler’s claim to peace means peace is shared: his return may be called wholeness while another person is kept under pressure.
THE ROOT
לַחַץ
laḥaṣ
GROWS FROM
לחץ
To press or squeeze, and thus to oppress.
The word translated “affliction” carries the sense of pressure: distress as something imposed upon a person. Here that pressure is made into the captive’s daily food and water.
ALSO GROWS
laḥaṣ: Pressure, oppression, distress.
לַחַץ
This noun names the pressure in the bread and water the king orders.
laḥats: To press, oppress, or force into distress.
לָחַץ
The verb makes the image active: affliction is pressure exerted on someone.
כֶּלֶא
keleʾ
GROWS FROM
כלא
To restrain, shut in, or hold back.
The prison’s name is tied to the act of holding someone in. Alongside the pressure of the ration, confinement describes both the closed space and the restriction imposed on the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
kālāʾ: To restrain, shut in, or withhold.
כָּלָא
The verb exposes the action behind the prison: the speaker is held back from freedom.
keleʾ: Prison, confinement.
כֶּלֶא
This noun names the place of restraint ordered in the verse.
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be complete or whole, and to make whole.
The king’s promised peace is shalom, wholeness. The verse places that claim beside another person’s imposed pressure, leaving the reader to see whose wholeness the ruler names.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the king’s promised return carry the sense of completeness.
shillem: To repay or recompense.
שִׁלֵּם
The same root family can speak of repayment, sharpening the contrast between the ruler’s claim of wholeness and the captive’s imposed cost.
THE PATTERN
When a message threatens power, authority can answer by narrowing the messenger’s freedom instead of receiving the message.
Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD.But prophesy not again any more at Beth-el: for it is the king’s chapel, and it is the king’s court.And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely:THE THREAD
Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.The word translated “affliction” here is לַחַץ (laḥaṣ), pressure or oppression, from the same root as the oppression named in Exodus. That shared root places the king’s imposed distress within scripture’s language of people being pressed down.
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