What Does 2 Kings 15:16 Mean in the King James?
Then Menahem smote Tiphsah, and all that were therein, and the coasts thereof from Tirzah: because they opened not to him, therefore he smote it; and all the women therein that were with child he ripped up.
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 used when the sea is split to make a passage is turned against pregnant bodies after the city refuses to open its gate.
THE MEANING
The verse puts the reader face to face with a brutal logic: when a city does not open to power, the entire population becomes the target, including women carrying children. It refuses to let conquest remain abstract by naming the bodies on which that force falls.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that conquest is only a change in territory collapses here: the verse names the pregnant women caught in its violence.
THE ROOT
בִּקֵּעַ
biqqēaʿ
GROWS FROM
בקע
To split, cleave, or break open.
“ripped up” in this verse is biqqēaʿ. The verb gives the violence a concrete physical shape: bodies are split open. The same root can describe water split to open a way, so the root carries the force of the act while its object and purpose make this violence plain.
ALSO GROWS
vayyibbāqʿû: Were split or divided, as of the waters in Exodus 14:21.
וַיִּבָּקְעוּ
The same verb describes the waters opening a passage, exposing the stark difference between making a way and inflicting violence on pregnant women.
biqʿāh: Valley or plain, a cleft or open stretch of land.
בִּקְעָה
This noun carries the root’s image of a split or opening into the landscape itself.
פָּתַח
pātaḥ
GROWS FROM
פתח
p-t-ḥ
To open, loosen, or make an entrance.
This is the verb for the city not opening to Menahem; it is distinct from the later verb for splitting open. The verse moves from an entrance withheld to bodies violently opened, making access the stated cause of the assault.
ALSO GROWS
petaḥ: An entrance or doorway.
פֶּתַח
The entrance is what the city withholds, placing denied access at the start of the verse’s chain of violence.
maphtēaḥ: A key.
מַפְתֵּחַ
This word names an instrument for opening, extending the root’s connection to access and entry.
מְנַחֵם
Menaḥēm
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
To comfort or console; related forms can also mean to relent.
Menahem’s name comes from the root of comfort and consolation. Here that meaning stands in sharp dissonance with the violence described; the name does not soften the act.
ALSO GROWS
niḥūm: Comfort or consolation.
נִחוּם
This noun carries the consoling sense contained in Menahem’s name.
nāḥam: To comfort or console; in some contexts, to relent.
נָחַם
This verbal form makes the name’s association with consolation visible beside the verse’s unrelieved violence.
THE PATTERN
When rulers treat a threat to their control as permission for force, civilians and children become its targets.
And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child.Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border:Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.Exodus 14:21 uses the same root בָּקַע (baqaʿ, “split open”) for the waters divided to make a passage. The shared verb carries the physical act of splitting across both verses; its object and purpose reveal the difference between an opening that makes a way and violence inflicted on pregnant women.
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