What Does 2 Kings 12:12 Mean in the King James?
And to masons, and hewers of stone, and to buy timber and hewed stone to repair the breaches of the house of the LORD, and for all that was laid out for the house to repair it.
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 verb beneath “repair” means “strengthen”: the breach is where the house is made firm.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s house is restored through tangible work: stone is hewn, timber is bought, and resources are directed to strengthen its breaches. The damaged place is named as the place receiving skilled labor and material. Repair means the house becoming firm where it has weakened.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that repair requires concealing the break: the breach is named openly and receives the work.
THE ROOT
לְחַזֵּק
ləḥazzēq to strengthen
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥ-z-q
To be strong or firm; in this verb form, to strengthen.
English “repair” can sound like making a defect disappear; the Hebrew verb carries the action of strengthening. The breach is not hidden from the work: the house is made firm where it has weakened.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāzaq: To be strong, grow firm, or prevail.
חָזַק
The house’s repair grows from the same root as becoming strong.
ḥizzēq: To strengthen or fortify.
חִזֵּק
This form makes explicit the strengthening carried by “repair” in the verse.
חֹצְבֵי
ḥōtzəvē maḥtzēv
GROWS FROM
חצב
ḥ-ṣ-b
To cut, hew, or quarry.
“hewers; hewed stone” in this verse is ḥōtzəvē maḥtzēv. English gives a crew and a supply; Hebrew echoes the same root in “hewers” and “hewed stone.” The material carries the action of the hands that prepare it: the repair is shaped through their work.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōtzēv: A person who hews or quarries stone.
חֹצֵב
This names the workers by the action that prepares the building material.
maḥtzēv: A quarry or stone cut from one.
מַחְצֵב
The same root links the workers’ cutting to the stone supplied for the repair.
THE PATTERN
God’s dwelling is sustained through human work that builds and strengthens it.
So the workmen wrought, and the work was perfected by them, and they set the house of God in his state, and strengthened it.So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.THE THREAD
And he gathered together the priests and the Levites, and said to them, Go out unto the cities of Judah, and gather of all Israel money to repair the house of your God from year to year, and see that ye hasten the matter. Howbeit the Levites hastened it not.The same strengthening verb, לְחַזֵּק (ləḥazzēq, “to strengthen”), names the repair in both verses. This companion verse names the money gathered for the work; 2 Kings 12:12 traces that provision into timber, quarried stone, and labor at the breach.
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