What Does 2 Kings 16:9 Mean in the King James?
And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him: for the king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew Rezin.
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 Hebrew word for carrying a people into exile also means “uncover,” so the conquest is pictured as stripping a people from the place that held them.
THE MEANING
A king’s hearing becomes action: Damascus is taken, its people are carried to Kir, and Rezin is killed. The verse keeps the cost of that response plain, land seized, people displaced, a ruler dead. Hearing is real, but it does not guarantee mercy or safety.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being heard by power does not mean being protected from what that power does next.
THE ROOT
גָּלָה
galah
GROWS FROM
גלה
galah
Uncover, reveal; in a causative form, remove into exile.
“carried captive” in this verse is galah. The exile verb belongs to the same root family as uncovering and exposure. That connection lets the verse show captivity as more than a change of location: a people are stripped from their place and left exposed.
ALSO GROWS
galah: Uncover, reveal
גָּלָה
This branch holds the root’s sense of exposure alongside the verse’s account of deportation.
golah: Exile, the people carried away
גּוֹלָה
The noun names those removed from their land, making the people themselves the visible result of the root’s exiling action.
שָׁמַע
shamaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
shamaʿ
Hear, listen, heed; hear and respond when the context calls for it.
“hearkened” in this verse is shamaʿ. This hearing becomes legible in the action that follows. The king responds, but the response is conquest, so the word’s active force does not soften the violence.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear, listen; hear and respond
שְׁמַע
It carries the same listening-with-response sense that appears in “hearkened.”
shemuʿah: Report, tidings
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is what is heard; here, the king’s hearing is revealed by what he does next.
THE PATTERN
In scripture, hearing is made visible by what follows: a voice received becomes an action, whether for rescue or for harm.
And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:THE THREAD
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.Both passages use גָּלָה (galah, to uncover and to exile): here the people are carried away; Isaiah says the people have gone into captivity. The shared root opens exile as a removal that exposes a people and their loss of place.
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