2 Kings2:19–22

The word the covenant swore would never be said of Israel verbal / quotation: confirmed

At Exodus 23:26 the LORD promises that none shall miscarry in the land, and at Malachi 3:11 that the vine in the field shall not cast her fruit. The Verifier records šâkôl (H7921) as the shared lexeme in both, the same verb the men of Jericho use of their own ground. Ellicott cites exactly these two references at v. 19. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme in both directions. ⚙ The force of the link is that Jericho's complaint is phrased, accidentally or not, as a report that a specific covenant clause has failed at a specific address, and the oracle of v. 21 repeals it by name.

Exodus 23:26 · Malachi 3:11

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7921 šâkôl (in 20 vv), a rare covenant-fertility verb, occurring in 2 Kings 2:19 and 2:21 and in both cited promise texts. No claim of quotation or literary dependence is made; the tier rests on the rarity of the shared lexeme, and Ellicott independently cites both references.

Bereavement as judgment: the curse catalogue structural / thematic: confirmed

The same verb runs the other way through the covenant curses and the prophets: Leviticus 26:22 (wild beasts that shall bereave you of your children), Deuteronomy 32:25, Hosea 9:14, Ezekiel 5:17 and Lamentations 1:20, which pairs šâkôl with מָוֶת mâveth just as 2 Kings 2:21 does. ⚙ I record this as motif, not dependence. The claim is only that Hebrew has a standing register for this loss, that the register is covenantal, and that the Jericho complaint and the Jericho oracle both sit inside it.

Leviticus 26:22 · Hosea 9:14 · Lamentations 1:20 · Ezekiel 5:17

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7921 šâkôl (in 20 vv) with all four; Lamentations 1:20 additionally shares H4194 mâveth (in 149 vv), matching the death-and-miscarriage pair of 2 Kings 2:21. Downgraded from verbal because the link is a shared curse register, not a citation.

Water healed, marshes given to salt: Ezekiel's inversion structural / thematic: confirmed

Ezekiel 47 sends a river east from the temple to heal a dead sea, and then makes one exception. Ezekiel 47:11 says the miry places and the marshes shall not be healed; they are given to salt. The Verifier records that single verse as sharing two lexemes with our unit: râphâʼ (H7495), the verb of 2 Kings 2:21 and 2:22, and melach (H4417), the word for what Elisha throws. ⚙ Both lexemes turn up in one Ezekiel verse, with their roles reversed. At Jericho salt is the sign of healing; in Ezekiel salt is what is left where healing is withheld. The observation is real and the shared vocabulary is computed, but no literary dependence is claimed in either direction, and I have not tiered this verbal.

Ezekiel 47:11

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H4417 melach (in 26 vv) and H7495 râphâʼ (in 62 vv). Two shared lexemes in one verse, but the relation is inverted usage within a shared water-healing motif, not quotation; tiered structural deliberately.

Jericho and its curse: a link the commentators themselves dispute flagged: verify source

Benson, Poole and Gill all raise Joshua's curse on the rebuilder of Jericho (Joshua 6:26, executed on Hiel at 1 Kings 16:34) as a candidate cause for the bad water. Benson and Poole leave it open, either when Joshua first took it or afterwards when Hiel rebuilt it. Gill records Abarbinel's view that it dated from Joshua, and then answers it: if so, the site would not have been inhabited again. ⚙ Our text names no cause at all. This is flagged, not because the verses do not exist, but because the connection between them is a commentator's inference that other commentators reject.

Joshua 6:26 · 1 Kings 16:34

basis: No Verifier lexeme basis was computed for this pair; the link is an inference offered by Benson, Poole and Gill and contested within Gill's own note (Abarbinel). 2 Kings 2:19 assigns no cause to the bad water.

A useless material and a real word: the prophetic sign-act structural / thematic: confirmed

Poole gathers the parallels himself at v. 21: the tree cast into the bitter water at Marah (Exodus 15:25), the meal cast into the deadly pot (2 Kings 4:41), the stick cast in to raise the iron (2 Kings 6:6). ⚙ In all four the verb is one of casting, the material is inadequate or contrary to the result, and the effect follows a word. The pattern is the point; the shared vocabulary across all four has not been computed here, so this stands as motif.

Exodus 15:25 · 2 Kings 4:41 · 2 Kings 6:6

basis: No Verifier lexeme basis computed for these pairs. The recorded basis is the shared sign-act pattern (inadequate material cast in, effect follows the word), named as a group by Poole in his note on 2 Kings 2:21. No quotation claimed.

Salt and the clean vessel ancient/widely-held

Barnes reads the new dish and the salt as chosen for symbolism, the salt being a common Scriptural symbol of incorruption, and cites Leviticus 2:13, Ezekiel 43:24 and Matthew 5:13 in one breath. Pulpit says the same and extends it: under the Law every offering was to be salted, and the same symbolism is still employed under the gospel, at Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:49 and Luke 14:34. Cambridge takes the vessel the same way, its purity and freshness typifying the purification wrought upon the spring. ⚙ Read forward, the pattern is not that salt is a nice metaphor for disciples, but that the Lord's chosen instrument for arresting corruption is always something set apart and small dropped into something large and spoiling, and that it works by what it signifies rather than by what it contains. Henry's whole reading of the unit is this: the salt is like the word of God, and the miracle is an apt emblem of the effect produced by the grace of God on the sinful heart of man.

Leviticus 2:13 · Matthew 5:13 · Mark 9:49-50 · Luke 14:34

Healed at the source, not the symptom novel

Elisha walks past every field where the losses are counted and goes to the מוֹצָ֣א, the going-out of the waters. ⚙ The New Testament's water sayings sit on the same instinct. Christ tells the woman at the well that the water he gives becomes a spring welling up (John 4:14), and the last vision of Scripture puts a river proceeding from the throne with leaves for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1-2), which is Ezekiel 47 carried to its end. The figure is real and the vocabulary of healing waters is genuinely shared, but these are Greek texts and no shared Strong's lexeme can be claimed across the Testaments; this is read as figure, not as citation, and I hold it loosely.

John 4:13-14 · Revelation 22:1-2 · Ezekiel 47:11

A word spoken in the perfect, before anything is seen novel

רִפִּ֙אתִי֙ is a perfect: I have healed, said over water that still tasted of death. The narrator then reports the Nifal, they were healed, and credits it to the word which was spoken. ⚙ That is the grammar of the centurion's request, only say the word and my servant shall be healed (Matthew 8:8), and of the nobleman at Capernaum who believed the word Jesus had spoken to him and went his way before he had any report (John 4:50). Ellicott's phrase for the Jericho miracle, the Divine creative will, is the right category: a healing that is complete at the moment it is declared. The apostolic writers make Christ the one through whom that word is spoken (Hebrews 1:2); applying the figure to this particular spring is my reading, not a claim about what Kings itself intends.

Matthew 8:8 · John 4:50 · Hebrews 1:2