What Does 2 Kings 25:21 Mean in the King James?
And the king of Babylon smote them, and slew them at Riblah in the land of Hamath. So Judah was carried away out of their land.
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
Inside “carried away,” the Hebrew says Judah goes into exile from its own soil: conquest ends by severing a people from the ground that holds them.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of power that strikes people down and then empties a land by removing those who belong to it. Judah’s exile is more than a change of place; it is a severing from its own ground. The sentence holds the dead and the displaced together, so neither cost disappears behind the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The violence is over when the killing stops.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגֶל
wayyigel
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or expose; in this verbal sense, to go into exile, removed from one’s land.
“carried away” in this verse is wayyigel. The Hebrew verb places Judah as the one going into exile, while the preceding blows name the force behind that displacement. The same root also means to uncover: exile carries the added sense of being exposed, removed from the place that held a people.
ALSO GROWS
galah: Uncover, reveal
גָּלָה
This verb shows the root’s sense of bringing what was covered into view, alongside its sense of exile.
niglah: Be revealed, appear
נִגְלָה
This form retains the same root consonants and makes the root’s sense of exposure visible.
אַדְמָתוֹ
admatō
GROWS FROM
אדם
The consonantal family is associated with ground and soil, and with being red.
The verse names Judah’s land as adamah, ground or soil, and the sound-family echoes adam, the human. The loss reaches beyond territory: Judah is severed from the ground bound into its name and life.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: Ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
This is the ground named in the verse, making the exile a removal from the soil itself.
adam: Human, earth-being
אָדָם
The shared consonants echo the human with the ground, sharpening what it means for Judah to be removed from its soil.
THE PATTERN
Conquest carries violence beyond the struck body by severing a people from their land.
And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.THE THREAD
The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall open them: Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be wholly carried away captive.Both verses use גלה (galah), whose range includes uncovering and going into exile. Jeremiah sharpens the movement in Kings by naming Judah’s captivity as total: the people are removed from the ground that held them.
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