What Does 2 Chronicles 23:21 Mean in the King James?
And all the people of the land rejoiced: and the city was quiet, after that they had slain Athaliah with the sword.
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 root for the city’s “quiet” is also rendered “rest” elsewhere, joining its calm to the image of a people settling after a threat is subdued.
THE MEANING
The people rejoice, and the city grows quiet after Athaliah is killed with the sword. The verse holds public relief and lethal violence together without turning one into the other. Its living claim is that calm can follow a violent rupture, while the quiet does not erase how it came.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Calm does not prove that no violence has occurred: here the city becomes quiet only after Athaliah is killed by the sword.
THE ROOT
שָׁקְטָה
shaqetah
GROWS FROM
שקט
sh-q-ṭ
To be quiet, at rest, or undisturbed.
Across English, “quiet” here and “rest” in Judges 3:30 render the same Hebrew root, שקט (shaqat), meaning to be quiet or at rest. The root brings the city’s silence and a people’s settled rest into one image: collective calm emerges after turmoil ends.
ALSO GROWS
vattishqot: And [the land] rested or was quiet.
וַתִּשְׁקֹט
Judges 3:30 uses this same root for the land resting after Moab is subdued, linking quiet with a public condition that follows the end of a threat.
veshaqat: And shall be quiet or undisturbed.
וְשָׁקַט
Jeremiah 30:10 uses this root as Jacob returns and is quiet, broadening the image from a quiet city to a people free from disturbance.
THE PATTERN
When a destructive power is brought down, communal release becomes audible as joy or visible as rest.
So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest fourscore years.The whole earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:THE THREAD
So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest fourscore years.The city is שָׁקְטָה (shaqetah, “was quiet”); Judges describes the land’s rest with the same root, שקט (shaqat). The Hebrew links the city’s quiet and the land’s rest as one image of a community becoming undisturbed after a threat is subdued.
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