The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
David Conquers Jerusalem
2 Samuel 5:6–11 — David Conquers Jerusalem. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
6Now the king and his men marched to Jerusalem against the Jebusites who inhabited the land. The Jebusites said to David: “You will never get in here. Even the blind and lame can repel you.” For they thought, “David cannot get in here.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ham·me·leḵ wa·’ă·nā·šāw way·yê·leḵ yə·rū·šā·lim ’el- hay·ḇu·sî yō·wō·šêḇ hā·’ā·reṣ way·yō·mer lə·ḏā·wiḏ lō- ṯā·ḇō·w hên·nāh kî ’im- ha·‘iw·rîm wə·hap·pis·ḥîm lê·mōr hĕ·sî·rə·ḵā lê·mōr ḏā·wiḏ lō- yā·ḇō·w hên·nāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-went the-king and-his-men Jerusalem-ward unto the-Jebusite, the-one-sitting-of the-land; and-he-said to-David, saying: “Not shalt-thou-come hither, but-rather the-blind-ones and-the-lame-ones have-turned-thee-away,” to-say: “Not shall-come David hither.”
Where the English smooths the original
A better translation is, Thou shalt not come hither; but the blind and the lame shall keep thee off.
The Jebusites relied upon the unusual natural advantages of their citadel, which stood upon Mount Zion, a mountain shut in by deep valleys on three different sides; so that in their haughty self-security they imagined that they did not even need to employ healthy and powerful warriors to resist the attack made by David, but that the blind and lame would suffice.
The children of God called idols blind and lame guides: therefore the Jebusites meant that they should prove that their gods were neither blind nor lame.Geneva states the idol reading as settled; Poole, weighing the same option, prefers the literal cripples as “most easy, and natural, and proper.” We record both and decide neither.
not because they were blind and lame, but because they were Jebusites, a people hated and accursed by GodPoole is answering an objection modern readers still feel: that David hated men for their disabilities. His answer is that the hatred is covenantal, aimed at Jebusites under the ban, not at infirmity.
7Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion (that is, the City of David).
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ ’êṯ way·yil·kōḏ mə·ṣu·ḏaṯ ṣî·yō·wn hî ‘îr dā·wiḏ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-captured David [ʼêṯ] the-stronghold-of Zion; she is the-city-of-David.
Where the English smooths the original
Whether Zion be the southwestern hill commonly so-called, or the peak now level on the north of the temple mount, it is the towering height which catches the eye from every quarterJFB deliberately declines to settle the topography and keeps only what is not in doubt: whichever hill it was, it was the one that dominated the eye.
The ancient Zion was the hill on which the temple stood, and the castle seems to have been immediately to the north of the temple. The modern Zion lies to the southwest of the temple.Barnes's identification of ancient Zion with the temple hill is a minority view in this very brief: Pulpit places the stronghold on the south-western hill and K&D on the southern and loftiest mountain. The disagreement is real and unresolved; we flag it rather than pick a winner.
A fortress without the city, and separate from it, and which was very strong; and the taking it might facilitate the taking of the city, which yet as appears by what follows, was very difficult to do
8On that day he said, “Whoever attacks the Jebusites must use the water shaft to reach the lame and blind who are despised by David.” That is why it is said, “The blind and the lame will never enter the palace.”
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ha·hū kāl- bay·yō·wm dā·wiḏ way·yō·mer mak·kêh yə·ḇu·sî baṣ·ṣin·nō·wr wə·’eṯ- wə·yig·ga‘ hap·pis·ḥîm wə·’eṯ- ha·‘iw·rîm śå̄·nə·ʾū ne·p̄eš dā·wiḏ ‘al- kên yō·mə·rū ‘iw·wêr ū·p̄is·sê·aḥ lō yā·ḇō·w ’el- hab·bā·yiṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-said David in-the-day the-that: “Every-one smiting-of Jebusite, let-him-reach in-the-tsinnôr, and [ʼêṯ] the-lame-ones and [ʼêṯ] the-blind-ones, the-hated-of soul-of David …” Upon-thus they-say: “Blind and-lame shall-not come unto the-house.”
Where the English smooths the original
An obscure and probably corrupt passage. The E. V., which transposes the first two clauses and introduces an apodosis from Chronicles, cannot be defended.The sharpest honesty in the brief. Cambridge then lists both surviving explanations and says neither is “free from serious objections.”
Taking up the words of the Jebusites, David called all the defenders of the citadel of Zion "lame and blind," and ordered them to be cast down the precipice without quarter.
The view of Josephus, suggested to him probably by his knowledge of the way in which the site of Jerusalem is honeycombed by tunnels, has been wonderfully confirmed by the discoveries made by Sir C. WarrenWritten in the 1880s, within a few years of Warren's excavation, and still the best external evidence for the tunnel reading. It confirms that a passage existed; it does not establish what tsinnôr means.
Most interpreters agree in making the word signify something hollow, and in applying it to water.
9So David took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. He built it up all the way around, from the supporting terraces inward.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yê·šeḇ bam·mə·ṣu·ḏāh way·yiq·rā- lāh ‘îr dā·wiḏ dā·wiḏ way·yi·ḇen sā·ḇîḇ min- ham·mil·lō·w wā·ḇā·yə·ṯāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-sat David in-the-stronghold, and-he-called to-her “City-of-David”; and-he-built, David, round-about, from-the-Millo and-house-ward.
Where the English smooths the original
A word always used in Hebrew with the definite article (except in Judges 9:6 ; Judges 9:20 ), the Millo. It is probably an old Canaanitish name for the fortification on the northern end of Mount ZionEllicott adds, with a candour worth keeping, that “There is, however, some difference of opinion about the topography of ancient Jerusalem.”
He built from the town house round about to his own house 1Ch 11:8.Geneva takes “the Millo” as a town house or state house, the reading Benson also gives. K&D and Pulpit take it as a Jebusite keep or corner tower. The name's meaning is genuinely unrecovered.
We see also proof of Joab's great ability in peace as well as in war.Drawn from the Chronicler's addition (1 Chronicles 11:8) that Joab repaired the rest of the city; 2 Samuel itself does not mention him here.
10And David became greater and greater, for the LORD God of Hosts was with him.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
dā·wiḏ way·yê·leḵ hā·lō·wḵ wə·ḡā·ḏō·wl Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hê ṣə·ḇā·’ō·wṯ ‘im·mōw
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-went, David, going and-growing-great; and-YHWH God-of-hosts was-with-him.
Where the English smooths the original
But the pride and insolence of the Jebusites animated David, and the Lord God of hosts was with him.
of armies above and below: was with him: to whom all his prosperity and success was owing.
The E. V. obliterates the identity of the Hebrew. See Introd. p. 22, note [99] [99] This verbal coincidence is frequently obscured in the E.V. by different renderings of the same original.Cambridge is complaining about a translation policy, not a doctrine: the 1611 translators deliberately varied their English for identical Hebrew, and the cost is exactly the kind of verbal link this unit turns on.
11Now Hiram king of Tyre sent envoys to David, along with cedar logs, carpenters, and stonemasons, and they built a palace for David.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḥî·rām me·leḵ- ṣōr way·yiš·laḥ mal·’ā·ḵîm ’el- dā·wiḏ ’ă·rā·zîm wa·‘ă·ṣê wə·ḥā·rā·šê ‘êṣ wə·ḥā·rā·šê ’e·ḇen qîr way·yiḇ·nū- ḇa·yiṯ lə·ḏā·wiḏ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-sent, Hiram king-of-Tyre, messengers unto David, and-trees-of cedar, and-craftsmen-of wood and-craftsmen-of stone-of wall; and-they-built a-house for-David.
Where the English smooths the original
The news of the capture of the city of the Jebusites had doubtless reached Tyre, and created a great impression of David's power.
The influx of Tyrian architects and mechanics affords a clear evidence of the low state to which, through the disorders of long-continued war, the better class of artisans had declined in Israel.
The Israelites evidently had little skill in architecture, since they relied on the Phœnicians for workmen both for this palace and for Solomon’s, as well as for the Temple.
The accounts left us of this king of Tyre are short; but it appears from them that he was a magnificent and a generous prince, and a believer in the true God.Benson is quoting Delaney, and “a believer in the true God” is an inference from Hiram's congratulation to Solomon in 1 Kings 5:7, not a statement of this text. The narrative says only that he sent messengers, timber and men.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens with a taunt, and the taunt is grammatically strange. הַיְבֻסִי is a singular collective, “the Jebusite,” which is why K&D has to explain that the verb way·yō·mer stands in the singular; one word speaks for a whole surviving people. Ellicott, Poole and Gill each trace how that people survived at all: struck in Judges 1:8, never dispossessed (Joshua 15:63; Judges 1:21), until the city was known by their name. The boast itself is disputed in every direction. Ellicott and Barnes translate it “Thou shalt not come hither, but the blind and the lame shall keep thee off”; Benson adds that Coverdale's English of 1535 already read it that way, and that the Seventy read it as resistance already offered. Geneva and Gill report the other ancient line, that the blind and lame were idols set on the walls, and Poole lays both out before choosing the literal cripples as “most easy, and natural, and proper.” ⚙ What no one disputes is the verb: הֱסִירְךָ is a Hiphil perfect, and K&D presses the point that a perfect “expresses a thing accomplished.” They are not predicting that David will fail. They are reporting it, in the past tense, before he has begun.
Then the narrator, with no adversative at all (Cambridge: the Hebrew is “simply, And”), says the fortress was taken, and the Hebrew plays on itself: lâkad, to catch in a net, takes the mᵉtsûdâh, which Strong's glosses as “a net, or capture.” How it was taken is the darkest sentence in the unit. צִנּוֹר occurs twice in the Hebrew Bible. K&D takes it as a waterfall or precipice and has David ordering the defenders hurled down it without quarter, noting that the Septuagint guessed a dagger, Jerome guessed water pipes, Luther guessed gutters, and Hitzig's proposal “needs no refutation.” Benson, following Kennicott, and Barnes, Gill and Pulpit take it as a subterranean water passage climbed by the attackers, and Pulpit reports the excavation in which Sir C. Warren's men crawled from Siloam through fourteen inches of space, scaled a perpendicular shaft cut through the solid stone, and came out inside the fortifications. Cambridge refuses to choose and calls the verse “An obscure and probably corrupt passage.” ⚙ Underneath the philology one thing is legible. The Jebusites chose the idiom of ritual disqualification, ʻivvêr and piççêach, the pair that marks the animal unfit for the altar and the priest unfit to approach (Leviticus 21:18; Deuteronomy 15:21); David takes their own words, as K&D says, and applies them to every defender. The siege is won by an argument about who is disqualified, and it freezes into a proverb that outlives the war.
The English of v. 9 is invisible where the Hebrew is loudest. In v. 6 the Jebusite is יוֹשֵׁב, the one sitting in the land; in v. 9 David וַיֵּשֶׁב sits in the stronghold, the same root, which Strong's glosses “to sit down, specifically as judge.” BSB's “took up residence” is good English and a lost sentence. K&D reads the choice of Zion as deliberate statecraft, strong by nature and placed on the Benjamin and Judah border so that the capital would belong to no single tribe, an argument Ellicott, Barnes, Poole and Pulpit all make in their own words against Hebron's southern position. Then David builds, and what he builds from is Canaanite: Ellicott shows that הַמִּלּוֹא always carries the article and is an old native name; K&D derives it from filling, the tower by which the wall's circuit was completed; Pulpit and Barnes both take it for the Jebusite keep. Geneva and Benson read instead a town house. ⚙ Nobody in the brief knows what the Millo was. Everybody agrees David did not level it. He built inward from the enemy's own defence and named the result after himself.
Through taunt, ban, tunnel and wall, the divine name has not appeared once. It appears here, in a summary verse of eight words. The Hebrew is an infinitive absolute pair, הָלוֹךְ וְגָדוֹל, “going and growing great,” and the verb of going is the same one that marched on Jerusalem in v. 6: the campaign never stops, it becomes a reign. Cambridge notes acidly that the English Version renders the identical Hebrew differently here and in Chronicles and so “obliterates the identity of the Hebrew.” Pulpit points out that the paragraph that follows this verse (vv. 10 to 16) is a summary, running ahead of chronology as far as Solomon's birth. ⚙ Two small things carry the theology. First, gâdal is not a safe word: Strong's lets it cover greatness “in body, mind, estate or honor, also in pride,” and the man in question has just named a city after himself. Second, the Hebrew has only a bare and before the divine name; BSB supplies “for.” Benson supplies the same causal link and is surely right about the sense, that this “was the cause of his great prosperity.” But the causal claim belongs to the commentators. What the Hebrew does is set greatness and presence side by side and leave the sentence unargued, ending on one preposition: ʻim, with him.
The last verse sends messengers in the other direction. Barnes reads Hiram's embassy as the political consequence of the conquest: news of the taking of the Jebusite city reached Tyre and made an impression. JFB and Ellicott read the cargo as an indictment, that Israel had to import woodworkers and stonemasons at all; Pulpit sets that against Exodus 35:30 to 35 and blames the long anarchy of the judges and the Philistine embargo of 1 Samuel 13:19. Cambridge gathers the cedar's canonical standing, prince of trees, emblem of strength and grandeur, and notes it had to come by sea from a forest that was not Israel's. Whether this Hiram is Solomon's ally, his father or his grandfather is unresolved: Ellicott, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D each compute the reign differently from the same Menander fragment, and Strong's own lexicon entry says the name belongs to two Tyrians. ⚙ The Hebrew closes with two details English smooths away. The verb is plural, they built, so the king who built his own walls does not build his own house. And the thing built is בַיִת, the same bare noun as the “house” of the proverb in v. 8 and the “house-ward” of v. 9. Henry is the one voice here who presses it: the house “was not the worse, nor the less fit to be dedicated to God, for being built by the sons of the stranger,” and he reads it straight into Isaiah 60:10.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested by the text. Read the unit as a single argument about entry, and it holds together. The verb bôwʼ, to come in, is refused to David twice in v. 6 and refused to “blind and lame” in the proverb of v. 8; between those refusals lies one untranslatable word, צִנּוֹר, and whatever it was, it was the way in that the wall did not cover. The Jebusites picked the vocabulary of the sanctuary to insult a king: ʻivvêr and piççêach are the two words that disqualify an offering and a priest. David won by turning the disqualification back on them, and the city that resulted bears a man's name. It is worth saying plainly that the chapter shows no repentance about this and asks for none; the ban on the Canaanite is presupposed, and Poole's defence, that the hatred is covenantal and not a verdict on infirmity, is the most that can honestly be said. But the Hebrew leaves a door ajar that the English closes. The saying that ends the siege does not name a palace. It names הַבָּיִת, “the house,” and the ancient versions could not agree which house: the Septuagint and Vulgate heard the house of the LORD, and Cambridge has to argue them down. That undetermined word is then left lying in v. 9, “house-ward,” and picked up in v. 11, where foreigners build David a bayith, and it is the same word God will use when he refuses David's temple and promises him a dynasty instead. So the unit's own trajectory runs from a house nobody may enter to a house David did not build, raised for him by the sons of the stranger. ⚙ We do not claim the narrator planned that arc; we claim the word is the same word, four times, and that every English rendering that varies it (fortress, palace, inward, palace) makes the arc invisible. If the reading is wrong, it is wrong in the direction of hope, and the text should be allowed to correct it.
The fortress fell through the one gap the wall did not cover, and the proverb that survived the siege never said which house it meant. (This line is our own synthesis, not a verse of Scripture.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The word on which the conquest turns, בַּצִּנּוֹר (tsinnûwr, H6794), occurs in exactly two verses of Scripture: here and Psalm 42:7, where deep calls to deep at the noise of God's water channels. ⚙ That is as rare as a Hebrew noun gets, and the Verifier records it as a genuine shared lexeme. It does not follow that the two passages mean the same thing by it. K&D reads a waterfall in both and admits we cannot determine the situation; Ellicott calls the sense “obscure”; Josephus, Kennicott, Barnes, Gill and Pulpit read a subterranean passage here; Cambridge calls the verse probably corrupt. The link is verbal and certain; the shared meaning is not, and we do not assert one.
Psalm 42:7
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6794 tsinnûwr, in 2 vv in the entire Hebrew Bible (this verse and Psalm 42:7). A rare shared lexeme, hence verbal; no quotation is claimed in either direction, and the sense of the word is contested in both places.
The Jebusites did not pick their insult at random. עִוֵּר (ʻivvêr, H5787, 23 verses) and פִּסֵּחַ (piççêach, H6455, 13 verses) are a fixed pair, and the pair belongs to the altar: the blind or lame animal may not be sacrificed (Deuteronomy 15:21), the blind or lame son of Aaron may not draw near to offer (Leviticus 21:18), and Malachi's indictment of a corrupt priesthood is precisely that they offer the blind and the lame in sacrifice (Malachi 1:8). ⚙ Cambridge notices the pull of that field when it reports that the Septuagint and Vulgate took the proverb of v. 8 to mean the blind and lame were excluded from the temple, then corrects them: they were barred from ministering, not from entering. The insult put the language of ritual unfitness into the mouth of a Canaanite, and David, as K&D says, took the words up and gave them back.
Leviticus 21:18 · Deuteronomy 15:21 · Malachi 1:8
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexemes H5787 ʻivvêr (in 23 vv) and H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv), both present in each of the three refs and in 2 Samuel 5:6 and 5:8. Both are uncommon and the collocation is a fixed idiom, hence verbal. No verse quotes another; the shared element is the idiom.
The same rare pair that shuts the gate at Jerusalem is the pair the prophets use when the gate opens. Jeremiah 31:8 gathers the blind and the lame in the returning company, and Isaiah 35:6 has the lame man leaping like a hart. ⚙ The Verifier confirms the lexemes, and Jeremiah 31:8 shares a third word with our unit as well, hênnâh (H2008), the very adverb the Jebusites used for the place David could not come: hither. We note the coincidence and claim nothing from it, since hênnâh is a common adverb (40 verses); the weight rests on the rare pair. What can be said is that the idiom of disqualification is not the Hebrew Bible's last word on these two adjectives.
Jeremiah 31:8 · Isaiah 35:6
basis: Verifier: Jeremiah 31:8 shares H5787 ʻivvêr (in 23 vv), H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv) and H2008 hênnâh (in 40 vv); Isaiah 35:6 shares H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv). Verbal on the strength of the two uncommon adjectives only; the reversal of sense is our reading, not a computed fact.
Within 2 Samuel itself, the word piççêach comes back in one mouth: “thy servant is lame,” says Saul's grandson to David (2 Samuel 19:26). ⚙ The Verifier records the shared lexeme, and it is uncommon, but we deliberately keep this thread below a verbal tier. The link that actually matters is not the word; it is the pattern, that the narrator of Samuel first gives us a king who makes a proverb excluding the lame from the house and then, without a word of comment, seats a lame man at his own table for the rest of his life. Neither passage cites the other. Any bridge between them is the reader's, and this reader has built one.
2 Samuel 19:26
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H6455 piççêach (in 13 vv). The lexeme link is real and could be tiered verbal; we downgrade it deliberately, because the single shared adjective is doing far less work than the shared narrative pattern, and no quotation or allusion is claimed.
הַמִּלּוֹא (millôwʼ, H4407) appears in only six verses, and the other five are all the same building site: Joab's repair of the rest of the city (1 Chronicles 11:8), Solomon's forced levy and his closing of the breach of the city of David (1 Kings 9:15, 9:24, 11:27), and Hezekiah's strengthening of it before the Assyrians came (2 Chronicles 32:5). ⚙ Ellicott, K&D, Barnes and Pulpit all read it as pre-Israelite, whose name must be explained from the Jebusite language, and K&D places it where the hill of Zion is lowest and most needed the help. The thread is a piece of masonry, not a motif: every king who mattered to Jerusalem's defence worked on the same Canaanite corner.
1 Chronicles 11:8 · 1 Kings 9:15 · 1 Kings 9:24 · 1 Kings 11:27 · 2 Chronicles 32:5
basis: Verifier: shared Hebrew lexeme H4407 millôwʼ (in 6 vv), with H1129 bânâh (in 344 vv) and, at 1 Chronicles 11:8, H5439 çâbîyb (in 282 vv). The rare lexeme would permit a verbal tier, but it is a place name: its recurrence records the same site, not a quotation or allusion, so we tier it structural.
1 Chronicles 11:4 to 11:9 tells this same conquest, and the Verifier confirms the overlap at 1 Chronicles 11:8, which covers the building from the Millo round about. But the older English versions did something else with the parallel: at 2 Samuel 5:8 they imported the reward clause, “he shall be chief and captain,” from 1 Chronicles 11:6, where Joab is named as the first man up. Ellicott, Benson, Poole and Gill all state openly that the words are not in the Hebrew of 2 Samuel and are supplied. Cambridge goes further and says the English version “cannot be defended,” and that the Chronicler either had a different text or omitted an expression that was already obscure. ⚙ We flag this thread because its basis is a textual judgment, not a computed link: the sentence in 2 Samuel has no apodosis, and every reconstruction of it, including Joab's promotion, is borrowed from another book.
1 Chronicles 11:6 · 1 Chronicles 11:8
basis: Verifier computed a basis only for 1 Chronicles 11:8 (shared H1129 bânâh, in 344 vv; H5439 çâbîyb, in 282 vv; H4407 millôwʼ, in 6 vv). For 1 Chronicles 11:6 no shared-lexeme basis exists in our unit, because the clause it supplies is absent from the Hebrew of 2 Samuel 5:8; the connection rests on the versions and on the commentators' textual judgment, and Cambridge calls the underlying passage “obscure and probably corrupt.” Flagged accordingly.
The saying that closed this chapter says the blind and the lame shall not come into the house. Matthew reports that after the Son of David rode into this city and cleared the temple courts, the blind and the lame came to him there and he healed them (Matthew 21:14), and Luke's parable sends a servant into the streets to bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame (Luke 14:21). ⚙ This is a figural reading and we mark it as ours. It cannot be a verbal link: no shared Strong's number is possible between a Greek and a Hebrew text, and the Verifier can compute nothing across the Testaments. The bridge is the English proverb and the Greek pair, mediated by the Septuagint, which Cambridge shows did render both adjectives here. None of the eleven commentators in this brief draws the connection, and we do not pretend they do.
Matthew 21:14 · Luke 14:21
basis: Cross-Testament, Greek to Hebrew: shared Strong's numbers are impossible and the Verifier supplies no lexeme basis, so no verbal tier can be claimed. The link is figural, resting on the identity of the category (blind and lame) and of the location (the house in Jerusalem). Novel as stated here: unattested by any commentator in this unit's brief.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The unit's hidden verb is yâshab: the Jebusite sits in the land (v. 6), and then David sits in the fortress (v. 9), a root Strong's glosses “to sit down, specifically as judge.” ⚙ The figural reading of that exchange is old and is recorded here in the brief itself. Matthew Henry takes it directly: “in the day of God's power, Satan's strong-hold, the human heart, is changed into a habitation of God through the Spirit, and into a throne on which the Son of David rules, and brings every thought into obedience to himself,” with its prayer that every idol be destroyed and he reign there for ever. Pulpit, writing of the same city, says that to the exiles it was the city of God and “to us Christians it is the type of Christ's Church on earth, and of his kingdom in heaven.” Zion enters Scripture in this chapter as a captured Canaanite castle, and Hebrews 12:22 ends by naming it as the city believers have already come to. The Christian reading does not add a meaning to the conquest; it follows the name.
Hebrews 12:22 · 2 Corinthians 10:5 · Ephesians 2:20-22
The last verb of the unit is plural and foreign: Tyrian craftsmen built David a בַיִת. Henry refuses to treat that as a blemish and makes it prophecy: the house “was not the worse, nor the less fit to be dedicated to God, for being built by the sons of the stranger. It is prophesied of the gospel church, The sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee, Isa 60:10.” ⚙ The New Testament runs the same line: those who were strangers and foreigners are built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19 to 22), living stones in a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5). Benson, quoting Delaney, goes as far as calling Hiram “a believer in the true God,” which is more than this text says, and we do not lean on it. What the text says is enough: the first materials of the royal house of Israel came from outside Israel, and the first embassy to arrive at the new capital was Gentile.
Isaiah 60:10 · Ephesians 2:19-22 · 1 Peter 2:5
The single thing this chapter says outlived the siege is a saying: blind and lame shall not come into the house. Cambridge records that the Septuagint and the Vulgate both heard that house as the house of the LORD, and has to argue them down. ⚙ Our reading is that the Gospels answer the saying rather than the siege. The Son of David comes into this city, and the first thing Matthew records after he clears the temple is that the blind and the lame came to him there and he healed them (Matthew 21:14); the parable of the banquet fills a house with exactly the four categories the ancient world excluded (Luke 14:21); and the sign the imprisoned Baptist is given is Isaiah's reversal, the blind seeing and the lame walking (Matthew 11:5, echoing Isaiah 35:5 and 35:6). ⚙ We mark this as novel and fallible. No commentator in this brief draws it, the link cannot be verbal across the Testaments, and the Hebrew proverb may well have meant nothing more than contempt for beggars, as Pulpit takes it. It is offered to be tested: if the house of v. 8 was only a palace, the reading loses nothing that the text was obliged to give.
Matthew 21:14 · Luke 14:21 · Matthew 11:5
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. This unit is six verses of Hebrew narrative (2 Samuel 5:6 to 5:11) and contains the hardest verse in the book. At v. 8 three separate uncertainties stack: the meaning of צִנּוֹר, a noun attested in only two verses of Scripture; the pointing of וְיִגַּע, where K&D argues the Masoretes pointed a Qal (“reach”) that should be a Hiphil (“hurl”); and the Kethib/Qere of שָׂנְאוּ, where the written text can mean “who hate David's soul” and the correction means “the hated of David's soul,” with Pulpit preferring the written text and K&D the correction. BSB resolves all three silently. Our interlinear parse (Qal passive participle, and Qal for wə·yig·ga‘) follows the Masoretic pointing, and we have noted every place where a commentator in the brief departs from it. Cambridge's judgment that the verse is “obscure and probably corrupt” is the honest summary.
Omissions in the English. The clause “he shall be chief and captain,” printed in the King James at v. 8, is not in the Hebrew; it is imported from 1 Chronicles 11:6, as Ellicott, Benson, Poole, Gill and Cambridge all state. BSB does not print it, and neither do we, but the whole Joab tradition attached to this conquest depends on it.
Topography. Where Zion stood is not settled in this brief. Barnes places ancient Zion on the temple hill; Pulpit and Ellicott put the stronghold on the south-western hill; K&D calls it the southern and loftiest mountain; JFB declines to choose. On the Millo, K&D, Ellicott, Barnes and Pulpit read a Canaanite keep or corner tower, Geneva and Benson a town house or state house, Gill reports a ditch and a filled hollow, and Pulpit concedes the name must be explained from a language we do not have. Pulpit likewise concedes that of the proposed derivations of “Zion,” “none of these derivations is of any real value.” We have preserved the disagreement rather than picking a majority.
Chronology. The identity of Hiram is genuinely open. Ellicott, Cambridge, Pulpit and K&D each work from the same fragment of Menander of Ephesus, preserved by Josephus, and reach different reigns and different Hirams; Strong's own entry for H2438 says the name belongs to two Tyrians. Cambridge and K&D both warn that vv. 10 to 16 are a topical summary, not a chronological sequence, so the palace of v. 11 need not follow the conquest of v. 7 closely in time.
Voices. All eleven commentators present in the brief are quoted, each as an exact contiguous substring resolved by code from the raw public-domain text; we have retyped nothing. Where a commentator asserts more than the text does (Benson's Hiram as “a believer in the true God”; Barnes's location of Zion; Geneva's flat identification of the blind and lame with idols) an editorial note says so. Sources run from 1599 to the 1880s and their archaeology is dated, notably Pulpit's reliance on Sir C. Warren's excavations, which were recent when the Pulpit Commentary was written.
Machine layer. Every ⚙ claim in this file is fallible and is marked. The cross-Testament threads and the third Christ reading carry no computed lexeme basis and cannot: Greek and Hebrew share no Strong's numbers. The Verifier's thread bases are reported as given, including their frequencies, and where a rare lexeme would have permitted a verbal tier but the link is a place name or a bare pattern, we have downgraded rather than claimed.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)