2 Kings6:1–7

The verb that drowned Egypt verbal / quotation: confirmed

The rare Hiphil וַיָּ֖צֶף (tsûwph, H6687) that lifts the axe head is the same root Moses uses of the Red Sea: the Lord “made the waters of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you.” Both Ellicott and K&D send the reader to Deuteronomy 11:4 for this verb, independently of the Verifier, and K&D names the form: yātsep̄ from tsûwph, to flow. The root occurs in only three verses in the canon, so the link is lexically real and not a coincidence of common vocabulary. What differs is the direction. At the Red Sea the verb buries an army under water; at the Jordan it brings a lump of iron to the surface. We make no typological claim here: it is one rare word doing opposite work at two crossings, recorded because both of our most technical commentators saw it.

Deuteronomy 11:4

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6687 tsûwph, present in only 3 verses in the canon. Independently cited as the parallel by Ellicott and by K&D at 2 Kings 6:6. A rare-lexeme verbal link, not a quotation.

Under the water, cut off verbal / quotation: confirmed

Lamentations 3:54 puts both of this unit’s heavy verbs in one line: “Waters flowed (tsâphû, H6687) over mine head; then I said, I am cut off (nigzartî, H1504).” The Verifier confirms both lexemes are shared with this unit, tsûwph from the floating of the iron in v. 6 and gâzar from the felling of the trees in v. 4. The mourner in Lamentations is the thing that sank; the next verses of that poem are his cry out of the low dungeon and the answer “Fear not.” We record the overlap as vocabulary, not as allusion. Neither writer is quoting the other, and the shared words serve opposite ends: in Lamentations the water closes and the man is severed, in 2 Kings the severing is what the men came to do and the water gives back what it took.

Lamentations 3:54

basis: Verifier: two shared Hebrew lexemes, H6687 tsûwph (in 3 vv, rare) and H1504 gâzar (in 13 vv). The rarity of H6687 carries the verbal tier; no quotation is claimed in either direction.

The beam of a hut and the beams of the temple structural / thematic: confirmed

קוֹרָ֣ה (qôwrâh, H6982), the word the students use for what each man will carry home from the Jordan, is not a common noun: it stands in five verses. Two of them are the cedar rafters of the lovers’ house in Song of Solomon 1:17, and two are the beams of the house Solomon built and overlaid with gold in 2 Chronicles 3:7. Geneva glosses the word here simply as “a piece of wood fit to build with,” and Cambridge notes that men in this condition could erect nothing but a building of the simplest sort. The Verifier confirms the shared lexeme in both directions. We tier this below the verbal threads above, because a builder’s technical noun will turn up wherever there is a roof: the link is a shared vocabulary of building, and the point worth keeping is only that the Hebrew makes no distinction in rank between the rafter of a gilded sanctuary and the one a poor student cuts with a begged axe.

Song of Solomon 1:17 · 2 Chronicles 3:7

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6982 qôwrâh (in 5 vv), twice in each parallel. Real lexical overlap within a shared building motif; deliberately tiered below verbal because the noun is technical vocabulary, not a marked allusion.

Consenting at the Jordan, in both directions structural / thematic: confirmed

Joshua 7:7 and this unit share two words the Verifier records: the river הַיַּרְדֵּ֗ן (H3383) and the uncommon verb ה֥וֹאֶל (yâʼal, H2974, in nineteen verses), which Ellicott glosses here as “Consent, or, be willing.” After Ai, Joshua uses that verb to wish aloud that Israel had been content to dwell on the other side of Jordan: the word of consent pointed backward, away from the land. Here one of the sons of the prophets uses it to ask Elisha to consent and come with them to the same river to build. A third word joins them that the candidate list did not record: we ran the Verifier on the pair directly (verifier.py pair) and it returns אֲהָ֥הּ (ʼăhâhh, H162, in fifteen verses) as shared, the cry of v. 5. Joshua says “Alas, Lord GOD” over a nation that has crossed this river and lost; the young man says “Alas, my lord” over an axe he has lost in it. The link is shared vocabulary inside a shared setting, not a quotation, and the two texts are doing unrelated work. We keep it because the same river hears the same verb and the same cry twice, once as a wish to go back and once as a request to get on with the building.

Joshua 7:7

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H2974 yâʼal (in 19 vv) and H3383 Yardên (in 164 vv) from the candidate list, plus H162 ʼăhâhh (in 15 vv) returned by a direct verifier.py pair check of 2 Kings 6:5 against Joshua 7:7. Yardên is far too common to carry weight on its own; two moderately uncommon lexemes plus the shared setting support a structural link, not a verbal one.

The only other shearing verbal / quotation: confirmed

The verb Elisha uses to cut his stick, וַיִּקְצָב־ (qâtsab, H7094), appears in exactly two verses in the Hebrew canon. The other is Song of Solomon 4:2, where the beloved’s teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes. The Verifier scores this the strongest lexical match in the unit for the plain reason that a two-verse lexeme cannot match anything else. We record it and claim nothing from it: there is no motif, no allusion and no theology running between a shorn flock and a cut stick, only a writer reaching past the ordinary verbs for cutting. It is listed here so that a reader who finds the match elsewhere knows it has been seen, weighed, and left as a lexical curiosity.

Song of Solomon 4:2

basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H7094 qâtsab, present in only 2 verses in the canon, the rarest shared lexeme in this unit. Verbal by rarity alone; explicitly no thematic or quotational claim.

The coin in the fish’s mouth structural / thematic: confirmed

K&D states the comparison outright: “The object of the miracle was similar to that of the stater in the fish’s mouth (Matthew 17:27), or of the miraculous feeding, namely, to show how the Lord could relieve earthly want through the medium of His prophet.” Both incidents are small, domestic and financial; in both, something metal is recovered from water that no one could have recovered; in both, the one who works the wonder tells another man to go and take it. Because this crosses Testaments, no shared Strong’s lexeme is possible and no verbal tier could honestly be assigned: Matthew is Greek, 2 Kings is Hebrew, and Matthew makes no citation of this passage. The basis is the structural parallel as drawn by a named commentator, and it stands or falls as his judgment.

Matthew 17:27

basis: Cross-Testament (Greek to Hebrew), so shared Strong's numbers are impossible and a verbal tier is excluded by rule. Basis is the explicit structural comparison drawn by K&D at 2 Kings 6:6, plus the shared pattern of metal recovered from water to relieve a small want.

Cut off, and the wood cast in novel

⚙ The verb the students swing all day, וַֽיִּגְזְר֖וּ (gâzar, H1504), is the canon’s verb for severance, and the Verifier confirms it is shared with Isaiah 53:8, where the servant is “cut off out of the land of the living,” and with Psalm 88:5, of the slain who are cut off from God’s hand. Nothing in 2 Kings 6 is reaching for that; it is describing woodcutting. But the collocation in this unit is hard to unsee once the words are laid side by side: wood is severed, the iron sinks, and the iron is raised only when a piece of that severed wood is thrown down to where it lies. Benson, listing the signs Elisha and others used, sets the stick beside the clay Christ put on the blind man’s eyes, and calls all such means inadequate in themselves, employed to display the reality of the miracle. That is as far as our sources go. The step past them is ours: that a piece of cut wood thrown into the water where the lost thing sank, which raises what could not rise, reads in Christian eyes as the cross. We mark it novel because no voice in this brief makes it and we can show no provenance for it here; that is a statement about our sources, not a claim that the reading has no older precedent. The christological reading of Isaiah 53 is itself ancient and widely held, but it is not evidence for the link we have drawn through this narrative, and we do not lean on it.

Isaiah 53:8 · Psalm 88:5 · Exodus 15:25 · John 9:6

What he begged and could not repay novel

⚙ The grief of v. 5 is specifically the grief of a man who owes what he cannot pay. JFB: his distress arose from the consideration that the axe had been presented to him, and that owing to his poverty he could not procure another. Benson and Poole both name the second sting, that his friend would suffer for a kindness. Henry generalises it: to an honest mind the sorest grievance of poverty is being rendered unable to pay just debts. K&D goes further on the word itself, holding that šāʼûl means begged, so that the man is not a debtor but a beneficiary who has destroyed the gift. Either way the shape is the same, and it is the shape of the parable of the unforgiving servant, where the lord of that servant forgives a debt his slave cannot possibly discharge, and of the stater in Matthew 17:27, which K&D himself sets beside this miracle: a tax the disciples could not pay, provided out of water. ⚙ Our reading is that the miracle is aimed at the debt and not at the tool. The axe is restored, but what is actually relieved is a poor man’s shame before someone who was kind to him. We mark this novel: K&D supplies the Matthew 17:27 link, but the reading of the debt as gospel shape is ours.

Matthew 18:27 · Matthew 17:27

Stretch out thy hand novel

⚙ The last word of the miracle is a command to a man who did nothing to accomplish it: hā·rem lāḵ, lift it up for thyself. Pulpit reads it as a test, that the man must show he believes the iron is really floating and not merely appearing to; and the man’s answer is the barest possible act, way·yiš·laḥ yā·ḏōw, he sent out his hand. ⚙ The pattern recurs in the Gospels wherever Christ heals by commanding the impossible thing first: “Stretch forth thine hand,” to a man whose hand is withered and who has no power to stretch it, and the hand is restored in the stretching. The iron was afloat before the command came; the command did not raise it, it gave it back. We mark the reading novel, since none of our voices draws the line, though Geneva’s note that God wrought this to confirm Elisha’s authority and Cambridge’s observation that this power was here exercised for an individual both point the same direction: the miracle is authenticated in public and spent on one man’s hand.

Mark 3:5 · Matthew 14:31