What Does 2 Samuel 22:46 Mean in the King James?
Strangers shall fade away, and they shall be afraid out of their close places.
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 names the refuge as an enclosure, so the shock is that those who hide behind closed walls still come out afraid.
THE MEANING
Strangers are fading, and the people behind their defenses come out afraid. The verse shows that a stronghold can enclose a force without making it endure; walls cannot keep its fear from appearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a fortified position guarantees mastery: those inside the close places still emerge in fear.
THE ROOT
נֵכָר
nēkhār
GROWS FROM
נכר
Foreignness or unfamiliarity; to mark or regard as foreign.
“strangers” in this verse is nēkhār. The phrase בְּנֵי נֵכָר means “sons of foreignness.” The same consonants can describe recognizing or treating something as foreign, so the word carries both an identity and the act of marking someone as outside.
ALSO GROWS
nokrī: Foreigner; one who is alien or unfamiliar.
נָכְרִי
This branch makes the verse’s foreignness a quality of being outside the group, not merely a distant location.
hitnakkēr: To act as a stranger, disown, or conceal one’s identity.
הִתְנַכֵּר
The same consonants show foreignness as something that can be enacted or recognized, adding force to the strangers’ sudden fading.
מִמִּסְגְּרוֹתֵיהֶם
mimmisgeroteihem
GROWS FROM
סגר
To shut, close, or enclose.
The word for their “close places” comes from the root for shutting or enclosing. English can make these sound like mere locations; Hebrew keeps the closure inside the word, making their emergence part of the image.
ALSO GROWS
sāgar: To shut, close, or enclose.
סָגַר
This verb exposes the action held inside the noun for their close places: they are places shut around those within.
misgeret: An enclosure, frame, or setting.
מִסְגֶּרֶת
This related noun preserves the sense of a boundary or enclosing frame, clarifying the stronghold image in the verse.
THE PATTERN
A closed place can conceal people for a time, but it cannot guarantee what comes next.
That thou mayest say to the prisoners, Go forth; to them that are in darkness, Shew yourselves. They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places.And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.THE THREAD
And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.Genesis uses the same root, סגר, when “the LORD shut him in” aboard the ark. There, enclosure shelters Noah; here, the word describes strongholds from which the strangers emerge afraid, showing that a closed place can shelter or contain without making its occupants invulnerable.
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