What Does 2 Chronicles 28:6 Mean in the King James?

For Pekah the son of Remaliah slew in Judah an hundred and twenty thousand in one day, which were all valiant men; because they had forsaken the LORD God of their fathers.

2 Chronicles 28:6 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The verse places 120,000 valiant deaths beside one relational verb, forsake, and names that departure as the cause of the catastrophe.

THE MEANING

This verse holds an immense slaughter and its stated cause together: 120,000 valiant men die in Judah in one day because the people have forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers. The word “valiant” marks them as capable men, even as the verse places their deaths within the people’s rupture with the LORD.

THE ROOT

עָזְבוּ

azvu

GROWS FROM

עזב

ʿazav

To leave, abandon, or forsake.

“forsaken” in this verse is azvu. The verb means an enacted departure: the people leave the LORD, rather than merely feeling distant from him. The root can also name the state left behind by abandonment, carrying the act of departure into its aftermath.

ALSO GROWS

azav: To leave, abandon, or forsake.

עָזַב

This is the root’s base verb; its plural form in this verse names the people’s act of departure.

azuvah: A forsaken or abandoned one.

עֲזוּבָה

Isaiah 62:4 uses this root-derived form for Zion’s former name, showing how the root can also name the condition abandonment leaves behind.

גִּבּוֹרִים

gibborim

GROWS FROM

גבר

gavar

To be strong or prevail.

“Valiant” belongs to a word family built around strength and prevailing. The verse calls the slain men mighty, so their deaths cannot be read as the defeat of a helpless force.

ALSO GROWS

gibbor: A mighty man or warrior.

גִּבּוֹר

This singular form names the kind of strength attributed to the men slain in the verse.

gevurah: Might, strength, or valor.

גְּבוּרָה

This related noun makes the strength behind “valiant” visible as a quality, underscoring what the slaughter takes away.

THE PATTERN

Forsaking God is portrayed as a relational rupture whose consequences become visible in what follows.

And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.

Judges 2:12 · KJVThe people’s forsaking is shown through the gods they follow and the response it brings.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

Jeremiah 2:13 · KJVForsaking becomes a visible turn from a source of life toward containers that cannot hold water.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Romans 1:28 · KJVThe refusal to retain God is followed by a consequence the verse describes as being given over.

THE THREAD

And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD is with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.

2 Chronicles 15:2 · KJV

The same Hebrew root for “forsake” appears on both sides of the conditional: if the people forsake the LORD, he will forsake them. That shared verb makes the departure in 28:6 legible as a relational rupture with stated consequences.

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