What Does 2 Chronicles 21:14 Mean in the King James?
Behold, with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people, and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods:
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 repeats the same root in “smite” and “plague,” revealing the plague as the strike’s named form.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a threat of bodily and collective harm before you: the blow reaches the people, children, wives, and all goods named in its widening list. It makes the violence concrete, naming the lives and livelihood caught in the threat.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the threatened judgment is private to the king is undone: the text names his people, children, wives, and possessions as within its reach.
THE ROOT
נֹגֵף
nogef
GROWS FROM
נגף
to strike or smite
“smite” in this verse is nogef. The verb נֹגֵף (nogef, striking) sits beside מַגֵּפָה (maggephah, plague), both from the root נגף (n-g-p). English gives the blow and the affliction separate words; Hebrew echoes the strike in both, as it reaches people, children, wives, and goods.
ALSO GROWS
nagaph: strike, smite
נָגַף
This verb names the action voiced by נֹגֵף (nogef, striking) in the verse.
maggephah: plague; a striking or blow
מַגֵּפָה
This is the verse’s noun for the affliction, formed from the same root as “smite.”
negeph: plague, blow
נֶגֶף
Numbers 16:46 uses this related noun for a plague, carrying the same strike-root into harm spreading through a congregation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes judgment as a striking or plague that lands in bodies, from an individual life to whole communities.
For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.And it came to pass about ten days after, that the LORD smote Nabal, that he died.And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.THE THREAD
And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the LORD; the plague is begun.Here “the plague” is הַנֶּגֶף (hannegeph, the plague), from the same root נגף (n-g-p) as “smite” and מַגֵּפָה (maggephah, plague) in this verse. The shared root makes the action and the outbreak one image: the blow is present in the name of the plague.
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