What Does 2 Kings 17:15 Mean in the King James?
And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.
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 verse says that pursuing vapor ends by making the pursuer vapor-like.
THE MEANING
This pattern is alive now: what receives sustained pursuit presses its shape into the pursuer. Turning toward what is empty does not leave a person untouched; the pursued thing becomes a likeness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this dissolves is that a person can pursue what is empty and remain unchanged.
THE ROOT
הֶבֶל
hevel wayyehāblû
GROWS FROM
הבל
h-b-l
To be vapor-like: fleeting, insubstantial, empty.
“vanity / became vain” in this verse is hevel wayyehāblû. The same three consonants appear in what they pursue and in what they become. The verse shows the consequence as a change of likeness: the pursued emptiness takes shape in the pursuers.
ALSO GROWS
hevel: Vapor; by extension, what is fleeting or futile.
הֶבֶל
This is the thing they pursue, making their object of pursuit itself a picture of impermanence.
wayyehāblû: They became empty or vapor-like.
וַיֶּהְבָּלוּ
The same root moves from the object pursued to the pursuers’ resulting state.
THE PATTERN
What people pursue or trust can reshape them into its own likeness.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.THE THREAD
Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?Jeremiah repeats the same wording: they walk after vanity and become vain. The repeated root makes the verse’s wordplay a recurring diagnosis: the pursued thing leaves its likeness in the pursuer.
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