What Does 2 Kings 23:31 Mean in the King James?
Jehoahaz was twenty and three years old when he began to reign; and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah.
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
Jehoahaz means “YHWH has grasped,” placing a name of holding beside a reign measured in only three months.
THE MEANING
You can know a visible season is brief without letting its length define everything that holds you. Here, three months mark the reign, while the name in the same sentence says “YHWH has grasped.”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A short season proves that you were never held.
THE ROOT
יְהוֹאָחָז
Yeho'achaz
GROWS FROM
אָחַז
To grasp, seize, or hold.
“Jehoahaz” in this verse is Yeho'achaz. The name joins the divine name to the root for grasping: “YHWH has grasped.” This root names both the act of taking hold and the resulting state of being held, so the three months measure the visible reign without exhausting what the name carries.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāḥaz: To grasp, seize, or hold.
אָחַז
This verb supplies the core image carried in Jehoahaz’s name.
ʾăḥuzzāh: Holding, possession, or landed property.
אֲחֻזָּה
The noun shows the root extending from grasping into what is held or possessed.
THE PATTERN
A visible boundary can mark a season without defining the reach of the one who holds.
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.THE THREAD
It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me.The Hebrew אֲחַזְתִּיו (ʾăḥaztîw, “I held him”) comes from אָחַז (ʾāḥaz, “grasp, hold”), the same root carried in יְהוֹאָחָז (Yeho’achaz, “YHWH has grasped”). The name opens into a living verb: grasping, holding, not letting go.
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