What Does 2 Chronicles 34:6 Mean in the King James?
And so did he in the cities of Manasseh, and Ephraim, and Simeon, even unto Naphtali, with their mattocks round about.
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 cleansing reaches past the center and circles through places whose names hold forgetting, fruitfulness, hearing, and struggle.
THE MEANING
The work of clearing what obstructs wholeness does not stop at your familiar center; it reaches across the inner map and around its edges. Manasseh (מְנַשֶּׁה, Menasheh, “causing to forget”), Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם, Efrayim, “fruitful”), Simeon (שִׁמְעוֹן, Shim’on, “hearing”), and Naphtali (נַפְתָּלִי, Naftali, “my wrestling”) let these places carry forgetting, fruitfulness, hearing, and struggle within the same sweep. The verse shows cleansing reaching every one of these territories.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what lies beyond your usual field of attention is outside the reach of cleansing.
THE ROOT
סָבִיב
saviv
GROWS FROM
סבב
savav
to turn, go around, or surround
English makes ‘round about’ sound like a location note, but סָבִיב (saviv, ‘around’) grows from סבב (savav, ‘to turn or go around’), a root of movement and circling. Its branch וַיַּסֵּב (vayyasev, ‘led around’) appears in Exodus 13:18; the shared root makes the reach here feel like a circuit through the landscape, not a touch at one central point.
ALSO GROWS
sovev: surrounding, circling
סוֹבֵב
This branch makes surrounding an active movement, echoing the work that reaches around the named cities.
vayyasev: led around
וַיַּסֵּב
Exodus uses this form for a route that bends around; here the same root marks the sweep of cleansing through the territories.
אֶפְרַיִם
Efrayim
GROWS FROM
פרה
parah
to bear fruit, be fruitful
Ephraim carries the root פרה (parah, ‘to bear fruit’) in its name, which Joseph connects with fruitfulness even in affliction (Genesis 41:52). Its place in this sweep lets the map include fruitfulness alongside forgetting, hearing, and struggle: the cleansing reaches terrain that is not defined only by what has been damaged.
ALSO GROWS
parah: to bear fruit, be fruitful
פָּרָה
The verb gives Ephraim’s name its image of fruitfulness within the wider sweep.
peri: fruit
פְּרִי
This branch names the fruit itself, holding the possibility of growth within a passage about clearing and cleansing.
THE PATTERN
Cleansing and restoration reach beyond their center into the ruined and overlooked places.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,THE THREAD
But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.The verb וַיַּסֵּב (vayyasev, ‘led around’) comes from סבב (savav, ‘to turn or go around’), the same root as סָבִיב (saviv, ‘around’) here. Exodus makes the root a route that bends through terrain; this verse makes it the reach of cleansing around the cities, opening the work as a full circuit.
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