What Does 2 Samuel 22:8 Mean in the King James?

Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth.

2 Samuel 22:8 · KJV

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 heaven’s foundations tremble with the earth, so even what seems to anchor reality moves under divine anger.

THE MEANING

Here, divine anger is not abstract: the earth convulses, and heaven’s foundations tremble. The verse gives that anger the scale of an upheaval reaching every level of what seems stable.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that whatever feels foundational must be immovable.

THE ROOT

יִרְגָּזוּ

yirgāzû

GROWS FROM

רגז

The root ⁨רגז⁩ (ragaz) means to quake, tremble, or become agitated.

“moved” in this verse is yirgāzû. The verb ⁨יִרְגָּזוּ⁩ (yirgāzû, “they tremble”) describes heaven’s foundations themselves. The word carries the sense of agitation beneath the surface, making the foundations part of the upheaval rather than a stable backdrop to it.

ALSO GROWS

rāgaz: To tremble, quake, or become agitated.

רָגַז

This verbal form shares the root ⁨רגז⁩ and makes the foundations’ movement a bodily image of agitation.

rōgez: Agitation, tumult, or disturbance.

רֹגֶז

This noun from the same root names the upheaval as a condition, widening the verse’s trembling into an atmosphere of disturbance.

וַיִּתְגָּעֲשׁוּ

vayyitgaʿashū

GROWS FROM

געש

The root ⁨געש⁩ (gaʿash) means to quake, surge, or convulse.

“shook” in this verse is vayyitgaʿashū. This root appears twice in the verse: first the earth shakes, then the heavens’ foundations shake. The repeated seed makes the movement one spreading convulsion through earth and heaven.

ALSO GROWS

gāʿash: To quake, surge, or be violently agitated.

גָּעַשׁ

This verb names the same force of convulsion that the verse applies to the earth and the heavens’ foundations.

vattigʿash: And it shook or convulsed.

וַתִּגְעַשׁ

This form of ⁨געש⁩ describes the earth’s shaking earlier in the verse, echoing the later verb and linking both movements.

THE PATTERN

When God’s presence or voice is revealed, what seems immovable in the created order trembles.

And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

Exodus 19:18 · KJVThe mountain itself quakes as the LORD descends, making divine presence a force the ground registers.

The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook.

Psalm 77:18 · KJVThe divine voice fills the heavens while the earth trembles beneath it.

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

Hebrews 12:26 · KJVThe voice shakes the earth and reaches toward heaven, extending the pattern across the whole created order.

THE THREAD

Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.

Psalm 18:7 · KJV

The Hebrew shares the root ⁨רגז⁩ (ragaz, “tremble”) for the movement of the foundations. In this verse the foundations are of heaven; in the psalm they are of the hills, carrying the same upheaval from the landscape to the cosmos.

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