וַיִּלְכֹּ֛ד אֶת עָרֵ֥י הַמְּצֻר֖וֹת אֲשֶׁ֣ר לִֽיהוּדָ֑ה וַיָּבֹ֖א עַד יְרוּשָׁלִָֽם
He took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
World English Bible · Public Domain
2 Chronicles 12:4
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) 2 Chronicles 12:4 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
He took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he captured the fortified cities that belonged to Judah, and he came to Jerusalem.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
He took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
He captured the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
He captured the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem.
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King James Version Public Domain
And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And he took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came unto Jerusalem.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And he took the fenced cities which pertained to Judah, and came unto Jerusalem.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And he tooke the strong cities which were of Iudah, and came vnto Ierusalem.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
And he took the strongest cities in Juda, and came to Jerusalem.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
and he captureth the cities of the bulwarks that `are' to Judah, and cometh in unto Jerusalem.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and he captures the cities of the bulwarks that [are] of Judah, and comes to Jerusalem.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
He captured the fortified cities that belonged to Judah and came to Jerusalem.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And he captured the fortified cities that belonged to Judah, and he came to Jerusalem.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And he took the fortified cities that belonged to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
He took the fortified cities which belonged to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And he took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
He conquered the fortified towns of Judah and then approached Jerusalem.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
And he took the walled towns of Judah, and came as far as Jerusalem.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And he took the fortified cities which pertained to Judah, and came unto Jerusalem.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
הַמְּצֻר֖וֹת
mᵉtsûwrâh
H4694
“the · ramparts”
Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- Appears 8× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at 2 Chronicles 11:10
- Part of Speech
- Particle + Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Feminine
- Number
- Plural
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
siege-works, stronghold, rampart
- siege-works
- rampart
- וַיִּלְכֹּ֛ד lâkad H3920 “and · to capture” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- אֶת ʼêth H853 “-” Particle, Direct Object
- עָרֵ֥י ʻîyr H5892 “cities of” Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Construct
- הַמְּצֻר֖וֹת mᵉtsûwrâh H4694 “the · ramparts” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Plural, Absolute
- אֲשֶׁ֣ר ʼăsher H834 “which” Particle, Relative
- לִֽיהוּדָ֑ה Yᵉhûwdâh H3063 “to/for · Judah” Preposition + Noun, Proper
- וַיָּבֹ֖א bôwʼ H935 “and · to enter” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- עַד ʻad H5704 “until” Preposition
- יְרוּשָׁלִָֽם Yᵉrûwshâlaim H3389 “Jerusalem” Noun, Proper
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 9
- words
- 9
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is הַמְּצֻר֖וֹת rampart H4694 — appearing just 8 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
הַמְּצֻר֖וֹת rampart H4694 occurs in 8 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 2 verbs
- 4 nouns
- 1 preposition
- 2 particles
Verb forms
- וַיִּלְכֹּ֛ד Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- וַיָּבֹ֖א Qal · Sequential Imperfect
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 13 words from the Hebrew and 16 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 14 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Cross-references
6Topical passages linked to 2 Chronicles 12:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- 2 Chronicles 11:5–12 Rehoboam lived in Jerusalem, and built cities for defense in Judah.
- 2 Kings 18:17 The king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a great army to Jerusalem. They went up and came to Jerusalem. When they were come up, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is in the highway of the fuller's field.
- Isaiah 8:8 and it shall sweep onward into Judah; it shall overflow and pass through; it shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of its wings shall fill the breadth of your land, Immanuel.
- Isaiah 10:11 shall I not, as I have done to Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?
- Isaiah 36:1 Now it happened in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them.
- Jeremiah 5:10 Go up on her walls, and destroy; but don't make a full end: take away her branches; for they are not Yahweh's.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
καί κατακρατέω ὁ πόλις ὁ ὀχυρός ὅς εἰμί ἐν ἰουδά καί ἔρχομαι εἰς ἰερουσαλήμ
And they obtained possession of the strong cities, which were in Juda, and came to Jerusalem.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
2 Chronicles, in the Historical, opens this verse with 9 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mᵉtsûwrâh (“rampart”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “rampart” (mᵉtsûwrâh) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- How does 2 Chronicles 11:10, which shares the word «rampart», read alongside this verse?
- These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
- «וַיִּלְכֹּ֛ד» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
- Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 7 words in this verse.
- 9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on 2 Chronicles 12:4 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Keil & Delitzsch
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch
Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)