What Does 2 Kings 3:16 Mean in the King James?
And he said, Thus saith the LORD, Make this valley full of ditches.
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 makes room for water before any water is visible.
THE MEANING
When the source is absent from sight, this verse pictures hollows being shaped in the dry valley. They do not produce the water; they make a place for it to be received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that visible provision must come before a place can be made ready for it.
THE ROOT
גֵּבִים
gebim
GROWS FROM
ג־ב־ב
To hollow out; form a pit or basin.
“ditches” in this verse is gebim. A ditch is made by removing earth, leaving a hollow that can hold what arrives. The Hebrew repeats the plural, gebim, gebim, so the command pictures the valley as a place of many hollows before the water appears.
ALSO GROWS
geb: A hollow or pit that can hold water.
גֵּב
The singular names the kind of hollow the verse commands the valley to become.
gebim: The plural form, also used for pits or cisterns.
גֵּבִים
Jeremiah uses this same plural for pits where people seek water but find none, showing that a hollow is a place to receive water, not a guarantee that water is there.
THE PATTERN
Provision may arrive beyond visible supply, while a prepared place can receive it.
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.THE THREAD
And their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew noun גֵּבִים (gebim, pits) for hollows where water is sought but absent. Here, the command to make those hollows rests on a promise that the valley will be filled; the root shows the space made to receive water, while the surrounding words name what fills it.
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