What Does 2 Chronicles 29:16 Mean in the King James?
And the priests went into the inner part of the house of the LORD, to cleanse it, and brought out all the uncleanness that they found in the temple of the LORD into the court of the house of the LORD. And the Levites took it, to carry it out abroad into the brook Kidron.
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
Cleansing reaches completion when what defiles the sacred interior is carried beyond its boundary.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of sacred space as something that can contain what needs cleansing without ceasing to be sacred. What is found within is carried beyond the boundary; cleansing reaches from discovery through to removal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The presence of uncleanness does not mean sacredness is gone: what is found within the house can be carried out as it is cleansed.
THE ROOT
לְטַהֲרוֹ
lĕṭahărô
GROWS FROM
ט־ה־ר
ṭ-h-r
Be clean or pure; bring into a clean state.
English “cleanse” can sound like surface washing, but this root holds the state of being clean and the act of bringing something into that state together. Here that movement begins inside the LORD’s house and reaches beyond its courts as what defiles is carried out.
ALSO GROWS
tahor: Clean, pure
טָהוֹר
The adjective names the condition the cleansing in this verse restores.
tahorah: Cleanness, purification
טָהֳרָה
This noun shows that the root names the state of cleanness as well as the act of cleansing.
הַטֻּמְאָה
haṭumʾāh
GROWS FROM
ט־מ־א
ṭ-m-ʾ
Be ritually unclean; render unclean.
“uncleanness” in this verse is haṭumʾāh. The root names both a state of impurity and the act of defiling. The priests find that condition within the temple, and the Levites carry it out, making removal part of the verse’s picture of cleansing.
ALSO GROWS
tame: Unclean, impure
טָמֵא
This form describes the state named as uncleanness in the verse.
timme: To defile, make unclean
טִמֵּא
This verbal form brings out how impurity can affect the space it occupies.
THE PATTERN
Cleansing becomes visible when what defiles a sacred space is exposed and removed beyond its boundary.
Then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the plague is, and they shall cast them into an unclean place without the city:Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves;THE THREAD
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.The same root, ט־ה־ר (ṭ-h-r, be clean or pure), appears in “I shall be clean.” Chronicles shows cleansing as removal from a house; Psalm gives that same root a first-person voice, opening the image toward the reader’s own cleansing.
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