What Does 2 Chronicles 5:10 Mean in the King James?
There was nothing in the ark save the two tables which Moses put therein at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of Egypt.
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 ark’s only contents are the tablets: the covenant and the people’s release from Mitzrayim are held at one center.
THE MEANING
The ark holds only the two tablets: the covenant is what the people carry at the center after coming out of constriction. Their release and their bond are not separate memories; the same passage holds both. Now, wherever life opens beyond a narrow place, this verse locates covenant at the center of that opening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that freedom means leaving every bond behind: here, release carries covenant with it.
THE ROOT
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
tz-r-r
To press in or constrict; צַר (tzar) means narrow, and the -ayim ending gives Mitzrayim its sense of the two narrows.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim names the constricted place the people come out of. The ark holds the covenant at the center of that passage, not as a relic detached from their release.
ALSO GROWS
tzar: Narrow, constricted
צַר
It gives the place-name its sense of pressure and confinement.
metzar: A narrow place or strait
מֵצַר
It makes the exodus a movement out of narrowness, a meaning English hides inside the place-name.
tzarah: Distress or trouble
צָרָה
It shows how constriction can name an inward state as well as a place.
כָּרַת
karat
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
To cut or sever; in the covenant expression, the LORD “cuts” with Israel.
The Hebrew verb behind “made a covenant” carries the image of cutting. The tablets are the enduring contents of this cut covenant, held at the center of the ark.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut
כָּרַת
It is the verb used in the Hebrew expression translated “made a covenant.”
keritut: A cutting off; divorce
כְּרִיתוּת
It shows the root’s language of a bond being severed, casting the covenant’s binding force into sharper relief.
בְּהוֹצִיאָם
bəhôṣîʾām
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ts-ʾ
To go out or emerge; in this form, to bring someone out.
“came out” in this verse is bəhôṣîʾām. The Hebrew form gives the exodus the shape of being brought out, not merely arriving somewhere beyond Egypt. The verse remembers the covenant at the heart of that emergence.
ALSO GROWS
yetzi'ah: Going out, departure, exit
יְצִיאָה
It names the movement out that frames the verse.
motsa: An outlet or source
מוֹצָא
It links going out with the opening through which emergence becomes possible.
THE PATTERN
The covenant carried at the center moves from stone tablets to writing within the heart.
And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.THE THREAD
I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.The Hebrew phrase translated “in distress” is מִן־הַמֵּצַר (min-hametzar), “from the narrow place,” echoing the constriction carried by Mitzrayim. The psalm opens the place-name into a movement: an emergence from narrowness toward a large place.
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