What Does 2 Kings 17:31 Mean in the King James?
And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.
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 gods’ names stand beside the burning, so religious names cannot blur what the children endure.
THE MEANING
This verse keeps the children in view as the ones burned in fire; the named gods do not obscure the violence. Its language makes the cost of devotion visible to the reader now, without softening it into abstraction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Calling an act worship makes its violence disappear.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׂרְפוּ
wayyisrefu
GROWS FROM
שרף
śāraph
To burn or consume with fire.
“burnt” in this verse is wayyisrefu. The root שרף (śāraph, to burn) also appears in the word for seraphim, “burning ones.” Here the children are the ones burned: the root keeps the physical act visible beneath the religious names.
ALSO GROWS
śāraph: To burn or consume with fire.
שָׂרַף
This verb names the act directly, leaving no ambiguity about what happens to the children.
śərāphîm: Burning ones; seraphim.
שְׂרָפִים
The shared root carries the image of burning into another word, showing how the language keeps this image joined across forms.
THE PATTERN
The biblical text names the people harmed even when the act is presented as worship.
Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.THE THREAD
And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew root שרף (śāraph, to burn) and names the same act. It opens this verse further by making clear that the burning itself remains explicit, and that God did not command it.
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