What Does 2 Chronicles 28:17 Mean in the King James?
For again the Edomites had come and smitten Judah, and carried away captives.
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 “they took captive a captivity,” binding the seizure and the captive condition into one repeated root.
THE MEANING
The verse names a violence that returns: a people are struck again, and lives are carried away into captivity. Capture is not an abstract loss; people are removed from their place and held under another’s power.
THE ROOT
שֶׁבִי
shevi
GROWS FROM
שבה
To take captive, seize and carry away.
The verb וַיִּשְׁבּוּ (vayishbu, “they took captive”) and the noun שֶׁבִי (shevi, “captivity, captives”) come from the same root. The wording holds the violence and its consequence together: people are seized, and they enter the captive condition named by that same seed.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: To take captive
שָׁבָה
This is the action in the verse: people are seized and carried away.
shavuy: Captive, one held
שָׁבוּי
This names the condition that follows the act of capture.
THE PATTERN
Captivity names people seized and removed by force, while Scripture can also reverse the image by showing captivity itself led away.
And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride; and mine eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because the LORD’s flock is carried away captive.Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.THE THREAD
And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.The phrase “was taken captive” grows from שָׁבָה (shavah, “to take captive”), the same Hebrew root behind “carried away captives” here. The shared root makes capture visible as both an act done to someone and a condition they are made to live in.
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