What Does 2 Chronicles 21:11 Mean in the King James?
Moreover he made high places in the mountains of Judah, and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled Judah thereto.
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 high places are not just a backdrop: the ruler builds a setting for unfaithfulness, then drives the people into it.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes power turning public space into a mechanism of betrayal: the ruler raises high places, makes Jerusalem’s inhabitants commit fornication, and drives Judah along. The pressure spreads from one ruler’s actions into a whole community; the verse names this as coercion, not merely personal drift. It speaks now wherever authority shapes a practice and presses people to follow it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that a community’s wrongdoing always comes from free, isolated choice; this verse names the pressure imposed by its ruler.
THE ROOT
וַיַּדַּח
wayyaddaḥ
GROWS FROM
נדח
n-d-ḥ
To push away, drive off, or cause to wander from a course.
English “compelled” can sound like direct force alone, while this root also carries the sense of pushing away or leading astray. Its branches include both driving someone off and enticing them away, so the verse presents the ruler as redirecting Judah into unfaithfulness.
ALSO GROWS
hiddiaḥ: To entice away, mislead, or cause to turn aside.
הִדִּיחַ
This branch shows that the ruler’s action is a deliberate redirection, not merely an invitation.
niddāḥ: One driven away or cast out.
נִדָּח
This branch carries the same root’s image of displacement, revealing the force behind the word “compelled.”
וַיַּזְנֶה
wayyazneh
GROWS FROM
זנה
z-n-h
To commit fornication or act as a prostitute; by extension, to be unfaithful.
The verb is causative: the ruler makes the inhabitants commit fornication. The same root names both the act and the practice of unfaithfulness, keeping the bodily force of “fornication” while also showing how betrayal can define a whole community’s relationship.
ALSO GROWS
zōnāh: A prostitute or sexually unfaithful woman.
זֹנָה
This branch preserves the concrete sexual force of the word in the verse.
zenūnîm: Whoredoms or acts of fornication.
זְנוּנִים
This branch names unfaithfulness as a pattern, matching the verse’s description of a ruler drawing a people into it.
יֹשְׁבֵי
yoshevei
GROWS FROM
ישב
y-sh-b
To sit, dwell, or remain.
“Inhabitants” comes from the root for sitting and dwelling. The coercion reaches people settled in Jerusalem, while a related branch can name the dwelling or seat where life is arranged.
ALSO GROWS
yāšab: To sit, dwell, or remain.
יָשַׁב
This is the root action beneath the word for Jerusalem’s inhabitants.
môšāb: A dwelling place, seat, or settlement.
מוֹשָׁב
This branch links the people’s settled place to the public setting in which the ruler’s pressure takes hold.
THE PATTERN
When authority shapes a practice and drives others into it, wrongdoing spreads from the powerful into a people.
And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria; they prophesied in Baal, and caused my people Israel to err.Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.THE THREAD
My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.Hosea uses the same root behind “fornication” in 2 Chronicles when it speaks of “whoredoms” and “gone a whoring.” That shared seed reveals a recurring pattern of unfaithfulness, while 2 Chronicles names the ruler as the one who drives the community into it.
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