What Does 2 Chronicles 8:5 Mean in the King James?
Also he built Beth-horon the upper, and Beth-horon the nether, fenced cities, with walls, gates, and bars;
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 Hebrew word for “bars” shares its root with “flee”: the thing securing the city is defined by the passage it can stop.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you an image of protection with layers: an upper and a lower city, walls around them, gates in the walls, and bars securing the openings. A boundary can contain thresholds whose passage is held.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that any opening makes a boundary weak: the gate remains part of the fortified city, and the bar secures that opening.
THE ROOT
בְּרִיחַ
beriach
GROWS FROM
ברח
b-r-ḥ
To flee or escape; to move swiftly away.
The word for “bars” is beriach, linked to the root barach, “to flee.” The same consonants hold escape and the bolt that secures a gate, so the image turns on passage: what can get through, and what is stopped.
ALSO GROWS
barach: To flee, escape.
בָּרַח
This is the root’s movement away, sharing its consonants with the bar that blocks a passage.
beriach: A bar or bolt.
בְּרִיחַ
This is the word in the verse: a bar secures the gate, making the opening controllable rather than erasing it.
THE PATTERN
A protected place is built from layered boundaries and openings that can be secured.
For he hath strengthened the bars of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.But the fish gate did the sons of Hassenaah build, who also laid the beams thereof, and set up the doors thereof, the locks thereof, and the bars thereof.And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.THE THREAD
For he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder.Psalm 107 uses the same Hebrew word for “bars,” but there the bars are cut apart. The shared root reveals that the boundary securing passage can also be broken open.
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