2 Kings 21:5

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

He built altars for all the host of the sky in the two courts of the house of Yahweh.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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חַצְר֥וֹת

châtsêr

H2691

“courts of”

Noun, Common, Both, Plural, Construct

Appears 190× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 25:16

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H2690 in its original sense

TWOT: 722a , 723a

court, enclosure - enclosures - court - settled abode, settlement, village, town

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

Grammatical profile

1 verb
7 nouns
1 adjective

Verb forms

וַיִּ֥בֶן Qal · Sequential Imperfect

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 19 words from the Hebrew and 21 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

Topical passages linked to 2 Kings 21:5 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

1 Kings 7:12 The great court round about had three courses of hewn stone, and a course of cedar beams; like as the inner court of the house of Yahweh, and the porch of the house.
1 Kings 6:36 He built the inner court with three courses of hewn stone, and a course of cedar beams.
2 Kings 23:4 The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the threshold, to bring forth out of the temple of Yahweh all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of the sky, and he burned them outside of Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried the ashes of them to Bethel.
2 Kings 23:12 The altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh, did the king break down, and beat [them] down from there, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron.
2 Kings 23:6 He brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, outside of Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust of it on the graves of the common people.
2 Chronicles 33:5 He built altars for all the host of the sky in the two courts of the house of Yahweh.
2 Chronicles 33:15 He took away the foreign gods, and the idol out of the house of Yahweh, and all the altars that he had built in the mountain of the house of Yahweh, and in Jerusalem, and cast them out of the city.
Ezekiel 40:28 Then he brought me to the inner court by the south gate: and he measured the south gate according to these measures;

Ezekiel 40:32 He brought me into the inner court toward the east: and he measured the gate according to these measures;
Ezekiel 40:37 The posts of it were toward the outer court; and palm trees were on the posts of it, on this side, and on that side: and the ascent to it had eight steps.
Ezekiel 40:47 He measured the court, one hundred cubits long, and a hundred cubits broad, foursquare; and the altar was before the house.
Ezekiel 42:3 Over against the twenty [cubits] which belonged to the inner court, and over against the pavement which belonged to the outer court, was gallery against gallery in the third story.
Ezekiel 43:5 The Spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and, behold, the glory of Yahweh filled the house.
Ezekiel 44:19 When they go forth into the outer court, even into the outer court to the people, they shall put off their garments in which they minister, and lay them in the holy chambers; and they shall put on other garments, that they not sanctify the people with their garments.

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.

Hebrew 2 Kings 21:5 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיִּ֥בֶן מִזְבְּח֖וֹת לְכָל צְבָ֣א הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם בִּשְׁתֵּ֖י חַצְר֥וֹת בֵּית יְהוָֽה

He built altars for all the host of the sky in the two courts of the house of Yahweh.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 2 Kings 21:5 Septuagint · lemma form

καί οἰκοδομέω θυσιαστήριον πᾶς ὁ δύναμις ὁ οὐρανός ἐν ὁ δύο αὐλή οἶκος κύριος

And he built an altar to all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord.

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 →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וּבְנָא אֱגוֹרִין לְכָל חֵילֵי שְׁמַיָא בְּתַרְתֵּין דָרָתָא דְבֵית מַקְדְשָׁא דַיָי:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on 2 Kings 21:5 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

2Ki 21:5 And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.

Ver. 5. In the two courts of the house of the Lord.] Both in the priests’ court, and in the people’s also, poured he forth his whoredoms: as being acted and agitated by a spirit of fornication, an impetus to idolatry. He was worse than his contemporary Numa, king of Romans, who filled the people’s heads with all sorts of superstitions, and so increased the number of the gods, that he left no room for himself to be placed amongst them, as Augustine saith wittily. {a}

{a} De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii, cap. 24.

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.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

the two courts of the house of the Lord--the court of the priests, and the large court of the people.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(5) In the two courts.—Even in the inner and more sacred court, where the sacrifices were offered to Jehovah.

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

5. the two courts of the house of the Lord] On the two courts of the temple, spoken of respectively as ‘the inner’ or ‘higher’ court, or ‘the court of the priests, and ‘the great court’ which must have enclosed the inner, see note on 1Ki_6:36.

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

And he built altars for all the host of heaven,.... Sun, moon, and stars:

in the two courts of the house of the Lord; in the court of the priests, and in the court of the people; and all this must be supposed to be done, not as soon as he began to reign, but when he was grown up to man's estate, and had children, as the next verse shows; unless it can be thought that those nobles in Judah, who liked not the reformation made by Hezekiah, took the advantage of his youth, and advised him to these idolatries.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

The one of the priests, the other of the people, 1Ki 6:36.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. The temple of Solomon had two courts only, an inner and an outer. The outer court was for the people, the inner for the priests and Levites. Manasseh desecrated the temple to the extent of setting up in each of these two courts an idolatrous altar, dedicated to the worship of the host of heaven. In the inner court his altar was a rival to the great brazen altar of Solomon (1Ki_9:6; 2Ch_4:1) which Ahaz had for a time removed from its place in front of the porch, (2Ki_16:14) but which Hezekiah had most certainly reinstated.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 Kings, in the Historical, opens this verse with 9 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is châtsêr (“court”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “court” (châtsêr) contribute to the verse as a whole?
1 Kings 7:12 shares this passage’s theme. How do the two illuminate each other?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
The verb «וַיִּ֥בֶן» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.