What Does 2 Samuel 17:13 Mean in the King James?
Moreover, if he be gotten into a city, then shall all Israel bring ropes to that city, and we will draw it into the river, until there be not one small stone found there.
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 Hebrew imagines a city’s erasure as a collective burden: everyone lifts and carries it until even a pebble is gone.
THE MEANING
The verse gives annihilation its full physical scale: ropes encircle a city, and a whole people carry it into the river until not even a pebble remains. The threat includes the place itself and its smallest trace.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that taking a city means only changing who controls it; here, victory is imagined as the city’s complete disappearance.
THE ROOT
וּנְשָׂאֵהוּ
u-nesa'ehu
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
to lift, carry, or bear
The KJV’s “draw” carries the movement, while נשא (nasa, “lift, carry, bear”) also carries the weight of what is moved. The city becomes a burden borne by the people who erase it.
ALSO GROWS
massa: a load or burden
מַשָּׂא
This branch makes the city’s removal legible as something heavy that is borne.
nasi: a leader, chief, or prince; one elevated
נָשִׂיא
The same root can describe someone lifted up; here, the whole people lift the city itself toward its destruction.
THE PATTERN
Violence reaches for total conquest when it measures its success by what remains, down to the last stone.
And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.THE THREAD
He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.Isaiah uses the same root, נשא (nasa, “carry, bear”), for lambs held close in a shepherd’s arms. The root names the act of carrying; here it bears a city toward destruction, while there it carries the vulnerable in care.
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