What Does 2 Samuel 5:22 Mean in the King James?
And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim.
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 threat does not just return; it spreads itself across the ground.
THE MEANING
The Philistines come up again, then spread across the valley. The verse speaks now wherever a pressure returns after seeming to recede and begins taking up space again. Recurrence here is not a passing appearance; it is an occupying presence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief this undoes is that a pressure that has receded cannot return.
THE ROOT
וַיִּנָּטְשׁוּ
wayyinnāṭəšû
GROWS FROM
נטש
To spread out or deploy; elsewhere, to leave or forsake.
The root behind “spread themselves” also appears in words for leaving or forsaking. English shows only the troop movement, while the Hebrew root holds both extension across the ground and the act of leaving something behind in the same word-family. This is a force let loose over the valley, not merely passing through it.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭaštî: I have left or forsaken.
נָטַשְׁתִּי
In Jeremiah 12:7, this form uses the same root in “I have left mine heritage,” showing the root’s connection to what is abandoned or left exposed.
yiṭṭōš: He will forsake.
יִטֹּשׁ
In 1 Samuel 12:22, the same root appears in “the LORD will not forsake his people,” extending the word-family from spreading out to forsaking or not forsaking.
THE PATTERN
A threat can return after receding and spread into exposed space, making recurrence an occupation rather than a moment.
And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them;Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.THE THREAD
I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.The word translated “left” here comes from the same root as “spread themselves” in 2 Samuel. That root carries both spreading out and forsaking, so the valley’s occupation and what is left exposed belong to the same word-family.
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