What Does 2 Chronicles 33:9 Mean in the King James?
So Manasseh made Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to err, and to do worse than the heathen, whom the LORD had destroyed before the children of Israel.
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 verb behind “made ... to err” means “caused to wander”: the verse shows how one person’s influence can turn a whole people off course.
THE MEANING
Influence can make an entire people wander together, and that shared course can deepen into greater harm. The verse speaks to communities now: belonging or identity does not keep a people from doing worse than those they judge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It overturns the belief that belonging to the right community shields its people from deeper wrongdoing; a whole community can be led into it.
THE ROOT
וַיַּתְעֵם
wayyatʿēm
GROWS FROM
תעה
to wander, go astray, or lose one’s way
“made ... to err” in this verse is wayyatʿēm. The root holds error and wandering together. Here its causative form places the force of that wandering in Manasseh’s influence: a whole people is moved off course together.
ALSO GROWS
taʿah: to wander; go astray
תָּעָה
This is the root’s basic sense, showing that the people’s error is pictured as losing their way.
hitʿah: to lead astray; cause to wander
הִתְעָה
This causative form makes clear that the verse describes someone directing others into that lost way.
מְנַשֶּׁה
Menasheh
GROWS FROM
נשה
to forget; to make forget
Manasseh’s name is linked with forgetting, a connection made explicit when Joseph explains his son’s name in Genesis 41:51. Beside the verb for causing a people to wander, the name places forgetting beside lost direction.
ALSO GROWS
nashah: to forget
נָשָׁה
This root gives the name its association with forgetting.
nashani: he has made me forget
נַשַּׁנִי
In Genesis 41:51, Joseph uses this form as he explains the name Manasseh.
THE PATTERN
A leader’s direction can carry a whole people into deeper harm.
For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.THE THREAD
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.Isaiah uses the same root, תעה (taʿah), for “gone astray.” There the people describe their own wandering; here the causative form shows how a leader can set that wandering in motion.
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