What Does 2 Samuel 5:21 Mean in the King James?
And there they left their images, and David and his men burned them.
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
What the defeated leave behind as a god, David and his men handle as an object and burn.
THE MEANING
What once claims power over you can be left behind and seen as an object that can be destroyed. The verse shows the abandoned images losing their authority instead of being carried forward as trophies.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that something once revered must always be revered is undone here: these images are abandoned and burned.
THE ROOT
עֲצַבֵּיהֶם
ʿatsabbehem
GROWS FROM
עצב
ʿ-ṣ-b
To fashion or form; related forms in this root family also name pain and grief.
The Hebrew word translated “images” points to fashioned forms, exposing the idols as made objects. The same root family also carries the language of pain and sorrow, a resonance hidden by the English word “images.”
ALSO GROWS
ʿatsav: Fashion or form
עָצַב
The images are fashioned objects, not powers beyond human making.
ʿetsev: Pain, grief, or sorrow
עֶצֶב
This branch adds a painful resonance to the image word’s root family.
עָזְבוּ
ʿazevu
GROWS FROM
עזב
ʿ-z-b
To leave, abandon, or forsake.
The verb names abandonment: the images are left behind by those who brought them. In the verse, what is abandoned becomes something David and his men can destroy.
ALSO GROWS
ʿazav: To leave or abandon
עָזַב
This is the verb’s root sense: the images are no longer kept with their former owners.
ʿazuvah: Forsaken
עֲזוּבָה
This related form makes the abandoned state explicit.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דוד
d-w-d
Beloved; beloved one.
David’s name carries the sense of “beloved,” so the victor is named by relationship rather than by force alone. That name meaning sits beside the scene in which the abandoned images lose their claim.
ALSO GROWS
dod: Beloved; beloved one
דּוֹד
This is the name’s root sense.
dodim: Love or beloved affections
דּוֹדִים
This related form preserves the root’s language of love.
THE PATTERN
A power represented by an image loses its hold when the image is exposed and destroyed.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats;Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.THE THREAD
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.The Hebrew word translated “images” here is the same word Psalm 115:4 calls “idols.” The psalm names them as the work of human hands; this verse shows what becomes of those made things when they are abandoned.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us