What Does 2 Kings 3:25 Mean in the King James?
And they beat down the cities, and on every good piece of land cast every man his stone, and filled it; and they stopped all the wells of water, and felled all the good trees: only in Kir-haraseth left they the stones thereof; howbeit the slingers went about it, and smote it.
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 attack reaches beyond the cities to the soil, springs, and trees that make life there possible.
THE MEANING
Here, destruction reaches into the conditions that sustain a place: workable ground is buried under stones, water sources are blocked, and useful trees are felled. Even the city whose stones remain is still struck by slingers, so what survives the first assault remains under attack.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that conquest only changes who holds a city dissolves here: it can also disable the land’s ability to feed and water whoever remains.
THE ROOT
מַעְיַן
maʿyan
GROWS FROM
עין
ʿ-y-n
Eye; the word family also names a spring or source of water.
The Hebrew word translated “wells” is maʿyan, a spring or fountain, built on the same word family as ʿayin, “eye.” The siege blocks the land’s outlets of water, attacking life at the point where it emerges.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye; also a spring or source.
עַיִן
The shared word family makes the spring an eye-like outlet in the landscape, adding a source-image to the verse’s account of blocked water.
maʿyan: Spring or fountain.
מַעְיָן
This is the word used for the targeted water sources, emphasizing the flow that the attackers make inaccessible.
יִסְתֹּמוּ
yistomu
GROWS FROM
סתם
s-t-m
To close, block, or stop up.
This verb describes intentional closure: the springs are made unable to give water. The same root describes wells stopped with earth in Genesis 26:15 and words shut up in Daniel 12:4; here, closure is literal, and water is its target.
ALSO GROWS
vayisattemum: They stopped them up.
וַיְסַתְּמוּם
Genesis 26:15 uses this root for wells filled with earth, showing the same act of cutting off a water source.
setom: Shut up or close.
סְתֹם
Daniel 12:4 uses this form for shutting up words; the shared root carries the concrete action of closing off.
THE PATTERN
When water and food sources are disabled, destruction spreads beyond its immediate target to everyone who depends on them.
He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him.And they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass.And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.THE THREAD
For all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.The Hebrew verb for “stopped” is from the same root in both verses. In each, conflict reaches the water supply by closing the springs or wells and making them unusable.
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