What Does 2 Chronicles 25:12 Mean in the King James?
And other ten thousand left alive did the children of Judah carry away captive, and brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock, that they all were broken in pieces.
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
“Alive” marks only the moment of capture here: the captives are carried to the rock’s summit and thrown to their deaths.
THE MEANING
The verse places you before a terrible truth: being taken alive does not guarantee safety. Judah carries the ten thousand captives to the rock and throws them down; the verse does not soften their killing. Its final Hebrew verb says they are split open, naming the bodily force of the act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that being spared in battle guarantees safety is undone here: these people are captured alive and then killed by their captors.
THE ROOT
נִבְקָעוּ
nivqe'u
GROWS FROM
ב־ק־ע
b-q-ʿ
split open; cleave apart
“broken in pieces” in this verse is nivqe'u. The final verb carries the bodily image of being split open. The same root can describe waters opening or form a word for a valley; here it names an act done to people, and its physical force stays in the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
baqaʿ: to split open or divide
בָּקַע
This is the verb used when the waters are divided in Exodus 14:21, showing the root’s concrete sense of cleaving.
biqʿah: a valley or broad plain
בִּקְעָה
This word for a valley comes from the same split-open root, extending its image from an opening in matter to a cleft in the land.
שָׁבוּ
shavu
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ב־ה
sh-b-h
take captive; carry off
“carried away captive” in this verse is shavu. The Hebrew names them alive and then says they are taken captive: capture is an act imposed on people, not a protected status. The sequence makes clear that their captors control what follows.
ALSO GROWS
shevi: captivity; captives
שְׁבִי
The noun names the condition created by the act of capture in this verse.
shavuy: a captive; one who has been taken
שָׁבוּי
This form describes the person as held by another, making the captors’ power over the ten thousand explicit.
THE PATTERN
Captivity leaves a captive’s body exposed to the captor’s power, even after the capture is complete.
And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.The final verb in both verses comes from בָּקַע (baqaʿ, “split open”): here the waters are divided, and in Chronicles the captives are split open by the fall. The shared root makes the physical action unmistakable while the contexts keep their meanings distinct.
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