What Does 2 Kings 23:13 Mean in the King James?
And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.
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 sets Jerusalem’s wholeness against a mount named for ruin, showing that royal construction cannot make destruction sacred.
THE MEANING
The sites stand before Jerusalem (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Yerushalayim: the two wholenesses), yet the mount is named for ruin; nearness to wholeness does not change what a place serves. Solomon’s royal construction does not make those shrines clean, the verse presents them as rendered unfit for sacred use.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A revered origin or proximity to the sacred guarantees that a place or practice is clean.
THE ROOT
טִמֵּא
ṭimmēʾ
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be unclean, or to make unclean.
The verb shares its root with “unclean” and “uncleanness,” so the act changes the shrines’ status, rendering them unfit for sacred use. “Defile” can sound like surface soiling; the Hebrew holds the condition of impurity itself.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean or impure.
טָמֵא
The same root names the resulting condition of the shrines.
ṭumʾāh: The state or condition of impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This branch makes the verse’s action a change of status, not merely damage to a structure.
הַמַּשְׁחִית
hammašḥît
GROWS FROM
שחת
sh-ḥ-t
To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
The Hebrew behind “mount of corruption” carries the sense of ruin and destruction. The name marks the place by what it does: it is destructive, even as royal hands have built its shrines.
ALSO GROWS
shāḥat: To ruin, spoil, or destroy.
שָׁחַת
This verb exposes the active force carried by the mount’s name.
mašḥît: That which destroys or corrupts.
מַשְׁחִית
This form appears in the mount’s name, linking its location to its ruinous nature.
THE PATTERN
A claim to sacredness cannot cleanse what corrupts the place that houses it.
For the children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the LORD: they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it.Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.THE THREAD
Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:The same טמא (ṭ-m-ʾ) root appears as “defile” in Kings and “defiled” in Leviticus. Here the object is a place; there it is people, opening the shared word to impurity in both what is housed and what is done.
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