What Does 2 Kings 14:23 Mean in the King James?

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years.

2 Kings 14:23 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The Hebrew marks Jeroboam’s accession and his forty-one-year tenure with the same root, making the reign one continuous span.

THE MEANING

The verse holds two kingdoms in one frame: Judah under Amaziah and Israel under Jeroboam. Rule has a named beginning, a place in Samaria, and a measured span of forty-one years.

THE ROOT

מָלַךְ

mālak

GROWS FROM

מלך

to rule or become king

“reign” in this verse is mālak. The Hebrew uses forms of ⁨מלך⁩ in both the accession clause and the duration clause: the same seed carries the verse from entering rule to holding it across forty-one years. Its branches name the act of ruling, the ruler, and the realm, joining the time span to the structure of kingship.

ALSO GROWS

melek: king

מֶלֶךְ

This branch names the person who holds the rule begun in the verse.

mamlākāh: kingdom, realm

מַמְלָכָה

This branch names the domain over which the rule extends.

THE PATTERN

Scripture makes a reign legible by anchoring its beginning to another ruler’s years and marking its span.

In the twenty and seventh year of Jeroboam king of Israel began Azariah son of Amaziah king of Judah to reign.

2 Kings 15:1 · KJVThe verse locates Azariah’s accession within Jeroboam’s reign, just as the current verse locates Jeroboam’s within Amaziah’s.

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,

Luke 3:1 · KJVThe account places its moment among several rulers at once, making time visible through overlapping offices and jurisdictions.

THE THREAD

Now in the eighteenth year of king Jeroboam the son of Nebat reigned Abijam over Judah.

1 Kings 15:1 · KJV

The Hebrew uses the same ⁨מלך⁩ (mālak, rule) root for “reigned” here and for Jeroboam’s reign in the current verse. Both verses make one ruler’s span visible by locating it within another king’s years.

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