What Does 2 Kings 19:18 Mean in the King James?
And have cast their gods into the fire: for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone: therefore they have destroyed 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 thing called a god is exposed as human workmanship, and as something humans can destroy.
THE MEANING
Whatever is only a made object can be burned and destroyed; calling wood and stone divine does not give them life or power. The verse exposes the collapse of a power that depends on what people fashion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that giving something a sacred name can make a human-made object capable of rescuing its makers.
THE ROOT
מַעֲשֵׂה
maʿăśeh
GROWS FROM
עשה
to do, make
The phrase translated “work of men’s hands” names these gods as products of making: מַעֲשֵׂה (maʿăśeh, work) grows from עשה (ʿāsāh, to do or make). The sentence places that made thing beside wood and stone, exposing the distance between being called divine and being an artifact.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāsāh: to do, make
עָשָׂה
The verb is the seed beneath “work”: the gods in the verse are something people have made.
maʿăśeh: work, deed, made thing
מַעֲשֶׂה
This noun names the supposed gods as the result of human action.
וַיְאַבְּדוּם
wayʾabbedûm
GROWS FROM
אבד
to perish, be lost; in a causative form, to bring to ruin
The verb translated “destroyed” comes from the root “perish, be lost”; here it says that people cause the supposed gods to perish. The root makes the reversal stark: what is treated as divine is itself vulnerable to loss.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: to perish, be lost
אָבַד
This is the root verb beneath the verse’s word for destroying the gods.
ʾăbaddôn: destruction
אֲבַדּוֹן
This noun from the same root makes explicit the ruin carried by the verse’s verb.
THE PATTERN
What human hands fashion cannot become an independent power that gives life or rescues its makers.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.THE THREAD
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.Psalm 115:4 uses the same Hebrew phrase, מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵי אָדָם (maʿăśeh yĕdê ʾādām, “the work of human hands”). The shared root מַעֲשֵׂה (maʿăśeh, work) traces both verses back to making, showing how plainly the claim of divinity rests on human workmanship.
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