What Does 2 Chronicles 20:23 Mean in the King James?
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 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 same verb for “help” describes the alliance’s final act: it helps its members destroy one another.
THE MEANING
The verse shows violence turning inward: the helpers become one another’s destroyers. Its force does not end with its first target; the alliance carries it into itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a shared target makes an alliance safe from its own violence.
THE ROOT
עָזְרוּ
ʿāzərû from ʿāzar
GROWS FROM
עזר
to help, aid, or support
“helped” in this verse is ʿāzərû from ʿāzar. The verse uses the ordinary language of aid for an act that serves destruction. The root leaves the direction of help open; the phrase shows what that help is serving.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēzer: help or aid
עֵזֶר
The noun makes the shared root visible: help can name the act of support, while this verse exposes its destructive aim.
ʿōzēr: helper; one who gives aid
עֹזֵר
The agents remain helpers even as they turn against their allies, making the role itself part of the verse’s unsettling reversal.
לְמַשְׁחִית
le-mashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
to ruin, spoil, or corrupt
The word translated “destroy” carries the same root that can describe corruption and ruin. The verse’s ending points to a condition of wreckage, not only the act of killing.
ALSO GROWS
nishchat: corrupted or ruined
נִשְׁחָת
This form shares the root behind “corrupt” in Genesis 6:11, linking destruction with a state of ruin.
mashchit: destroying; bringing ruin
מַשְׁחִית
This form appears in the verse’s final description, as the destruction turns from Seir toward the allies themselves.
THE PATTERN
Violence gathered against others can turn inward and consume those who wield it.
And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the LORD set every man’s sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the host fled to Beth-shittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abel-meholah, unto Tabbath.His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.THE THREAD
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.The word translated “destroy” here comes from שחת (shāḥat, “to ruin or corrupt”), the same root behind “corrupt” in Genesis 6:11. Hebrew lets the two verses connect corruption with ruin: what is corrupted is already being brought to destruction.
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