What Does 2 Kings 11:20 Mean in the King James?
And all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city was in quiet: and they slew Athaliah with the sword beside the king’s house.
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 city’s quiet and the people’s rejoicing stand beside a killing, so public relief does not erase the violence that accompanies it.
THE MEANING
Collective relief and lethal violence occupy the same civic moment: the people rejoice, the city grows quiet, and Athaliah is killed by the sword. The verse keeps the cost of that quiet in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A quiet city does not prove that no one has paid a violent cost.
THE ROOT
שָׁקְטָה
shaqetah
GROWS FROM
שקט
shaqat
Be quiet; remain undisturbed.
The word describes the city as settled or undisturbed. The same root can describe a land resting after battle, so the quiet here sits alongside the verse’s explicit killing.
ALSO GROWS
sheqet: Quietness; stillness.
שֶׁקֶט
It names the settled state expressed by the city’s quiet.
vatishqot: And it rested; and it was quiet.
וַתִּשְׁקֹט
This form appears in Judges 5:31 for the land’s rest after Sisera’s defeat, linking quiet with the aftermath of violence.
הֵמִיתוּ
hemitu
GROWS FROM
מות
mut
Die; be dead.
“slew” in this verse is hemitu. The Hebrew verb is a causative form of מות (mut, to die): they put Athaliah to death. Its grammar leaves the agents and the death in view even as the city’s quiet is named.
ALSO GROWS
māvet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun makes explicit the outcome contained in the verse’s causative verb.
met: Dead; a dead person.
מֵת
This form keeps the root’s focus on death itself, rather than treating the killing as a mere change in civic order.
וַיְשַׂמְּחוּ
vayesammechu
GROWS FROM
שמח
samach
Rejoice; be glad.
“rejoiced” in this verse is vayesammechu. The people are the subject of this shared rejoicing, which the verse places beside the city’s quiet and Athaliah’s death. The collective joy does not make the violence disappear.
ALSO GROWS
simchah: Joy; rejoicing.
שִׂמְחָה
This noun carries the same root into the idea of joy as a shared state.
sameach: Glad; rejoicing.
שָׂמֵחַ
This form describes someone who is glad, while the verse applies the root to the people together.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can place communal rejoicing after a power is violently overthrown while leaving that violence visible.
Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.THE THREAD
So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.Judges 5:31 uses the same Hebrew root שקט (shaqat, be quiet or at rest) for the land’s rest after Sisera’s defeat. The shared root lets the city’s quiet here echo that post-battle stillness, with the violence still named in both passages.
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