What Does 2 Kings 10:25 Mean in the King James?
And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, and slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal.
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 offering reaches its final moment, and the sword becomes the next mouth in the scene.
THE MEANING
You are shown a religious rite ending at the exact instant a leader commands slaughter. The guards strike the people with swords, cast them out, and continue to the city of Baal’s house; ceremony and organized killing occupy the same scene. The verse keeps the violence explicit and bodily.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A completed religious rite makes the violence that follows clean or invisible. Here the offering ends, and the slaughter is stated plainly.
THE ROOT
עֹלָה
ʿolah
GROWS FROM
עלה
rise, go up, ascend
עֹלָה (ʿolah, burnt offering) names what rises. The sentence places the end of that ascent immediately before Jehu’s command, keeping the rite and the killing in one uninterrupted scene.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: to rise, go up
עָלָה
The verb makes the upward movement inside the offering’s name visible.
ʿaliyyah: ascent, going up
עֲלִיָּה
This related noun preserves the same root of rising, showing the motion carried by עֹלָה (ʿolah, burnt offering).
הַכּוּם
hakkum
GROWS FROM
נכה
strike, hit
The command translated slay and the following report translated smote both use forms of נכה (nakah, strike). The repeated root carries the blow from order to execution, then the verse names the sword as its instrument.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: a blow, wound, or plague
מַכָּה
This noun shows how the root’s act of striking can name the injury it leaves.
hikkah: struck, hit
הִכָּה
This verb form is the same striking action repeated in the guards’ execution of the command.
חֶרֶב
cherev
GROWS FROM
חרב
become dry or desolate; lay waste
The word חֶרֶב (cherev, sword) shares its consonants with חָרַב (charav, be laid waste). The phrase לְפִי־חֶרֶב (lefi cherev) is literally by the mouth of a sword, so the command’s human voice is followed by the sword’s mouth.
ALSO GROWS
charav: to become desolate, be laid waste
חָרַב
This verb carries the desolation associated with the sword’s root.
choravot: ruins, desolations
חֳרָבוֹת
This noun shows the devastation named by the same consonants as חֶרֶב (cherev, sword).
THE PATTERN
Religious performance cannot conceal the violence or death that occurs alongside it.
And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.THE THREAD
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word חֶרֶב (cherev, sword) found here, but shows swords being beaten into tools for cultivation. The shared word places this killing beside an image of violence materially transformed, without softening what Jehu’s command does in this verse.
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