What Does 2 Chronicles 21:18 Mean in the King James?
And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease.
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 says “there was no healing,” letting the language of cure name the affliction by its absence.
THE MEANING
Here, judgment is not abstract: it reaches the innermost body and leaves no remedy. The line gives no promise that every affliction ends in recovery; it keeps the horror of a wound without healing visible now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that scripture’s language of judgment stays symbolic: this line makes bodily affliction explicit.
THE ROOT
אֵין מַרְפֵּא
ʾên marpe
GROWS FROM
רפא
r-p-ʾ
To heal or restore to soundness.
The Hebrew phrase means “there is no healing” or “no remedy,” using the word-family for healing to name what is absent. English compresses that stark phrasing into “incurable.”
ALSO GROWS
rapha: To heal or restore.
רָפָא
Hosea uses this verb for healing, showing the same root’s direct connection to restoration.
refu’ah: Healing or recovery.
רְפוּאָה
This branch names healing as a condition of restored health, the very thing absent in the verse.
marpe: Healing or remedy.
מַרְפֵּא
This is the noun in the verse, negated by אֵין (ʾên, “there is no”).
THE PATTERN
Scripture can portray divine judgment as a blow that reaches the body.
And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.THE THREAD
Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up.The Hebrew noun מַרְפֵּא (marpe, “healing” or “remedy”) shares the root רפא (r-p-ʾ, “heal”) with Hosea’s יִרְפָּאֵנוּ (yirpa’enu, “he will heal us”). The shared root sharpens the contrast: this verse names healing’s absence, while Hosea names its arrival.
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