What Does 2 Kings 18:17 Mean in the King James?
And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rab-shakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great host against Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. And when they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller’s field.
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
Jerusalem carries the name of wholeness even as an invading army reaches the channel that sustains it.
THE MEANING
Pressure reaches the source that sustains Jerusalem: the great host comes to the conduit, while the city’s name still carries wholeness. Threat and wholeness stand together in the same scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that a real wholeness means no threat can reach you; here, the threat arrives at the city’s water channel without erasing the wholeness its name carries.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
wayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ח
shalach
To send forth, release, or stretch out.
“sent” in this verse is wayyishlach. The king sends an army as an act of pressure, but shalach also carries the sense of release and sending forth. English gives the action one shade here; the root opens it beside the same sending that can carry release elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal, release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch brings the root’s releasing sense into view beside the king’s hostile dispatch.
Shiloach: Sent; the name behind Siloam, the pool of Sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The sent waters of Siloam connect the root of this army’s sending with a channel through which sight is restored.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ם
shalom
Wholeness, completeness; the city’s name carries shalom, wholeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name holds wholeness while the scene holds invasion. The city’s name does not mean danger is absent; here, wholeness and threat occupy the same ground.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in Jerusalem’s name, set against the approaching host.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the name’s language of completeness audible even as the conduit is exposed to attack.
THE PATTERN
What is sent carries the character of its purpose: it can press into constriction or become a channel of release and restoration.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.Both verses use shalach for sending. In this scene, the king sends an army to Jerusalem’s conduit; in the psalm, a sent word heals and delivers, revealing how much depends on what the sending carries.
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