וַיְהִ֥י הַיּ֖וֹם וַיָּ֣בֹא שָׁ֑מָּה וַיָּ֥סַר אֶל הָעֲלִיָּ֖ה וַיִּשְׁכַּב שָֽׁמָּה
It fell on a day, that he came there, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
World English Bible · Public Domain
2 Kings 4:11
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) 2 Kings 4:11 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
It fell on a day, that he came there, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
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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
It fell on a day, that he came there, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
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King James Version Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber, and lay there.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And it was the day, and he came to there. And he turned aside to the upper chamber, and he lay down there.
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
It fell on a day, that he came there, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
One day Elisha came to visit and went to his upper room to lie down.
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
One day Elisha came to visit and went to his upper room to lie down.
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King James Version Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber, and lay there.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber and lay there.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And on a day, hee came thither and turned into the chamber, and lay therein,
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Now there was a certain day when he came and turned in to the chamber, and rested there.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
And the day cometh, that he cometh in thither, and turneth aside unto the upper chamber, and lieth there,
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
And the day comes that he comes in there, and turns aside to the upper chamber, and lies there,
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
So when the day came again that Elisha stopped there, he stayed in the room and rested there.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And it was the day, and he came to there. And he turned aside to the upper chamber, and he lay down there.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And it came to pass on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the upper chamber, and lay there.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
One day he came there, and he went to the room and lay there.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber, and lay there.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
One day Elisha arrived and went up to his room and lay down.
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Now one day, when he had gone there, he went into the little room and took his rest there.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the upper chamber and lay there.
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 →
הָעֲלִיָּ֖ה
ʻălîyâh
H5944
“the · roof chamber”
Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- Appears 20× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Judges 3:20
- Part of Speech
- Particle + Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Feminine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
roof-room, roof chamber
- וַיְהִ֥י hâyâh H1961 “and · to be” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- הַיּ֖וֹם yôwm H3117 “the · day” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- וַיָּ֣בֹא bôwʼ H935 “and · to enter” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- שָׁ֑מָּה shâm H8033 “there · toward” Adverb + Suffix, Demonstrative
- וַיָּ֥סַר çûwr H5493 “and · to turn aside” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- אֶל ʼêl H413 “to” Preposition
- הָעֲלִיָּ֖ה ʻălîyâh H5944 “the · roof chamber” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- וַיִּשְׁכַּב shâkab H7901 “and · to lie down” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- שָֽׁמָּה shâm H8033 “there · toward” Adverb + Suffix, Demonstrative
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
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is הָעֲלִיָּ֖ה roof chamber H5944 — appearing just 20 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
הָעֲלִיָּ֖ה roof chamber H5944 occurs in 20 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 4 verbs
- 2 nouns
- 1 preposition
- 2 adverbs
Verb forms
- וַיְהִ֥י Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- וַיָּ֣בֹא Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- וַיָּ֥סַר Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- וַיִּשְׁכַּב Qal · Sequential Imperfect
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- שָׁ֑מָּה there H8033 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 18 words from the Hebrew and 19 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.
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 γίγνομαι ἡμέρα καί εἰςἔρχομαι ἐκεῖ καί ἐκκλίνω εἰς ὁ ὑπερῷον καί κοιμάω ἐκεῖ
And a day came, and he went in there, and turned aside into the upper chamber, and lay there.
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.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
וַהֲוָה יוֹמָא וְעַל לְתַמָן וְזָר לְעִילִיתָא וּשְׁכִיב תַּמָן:
(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.
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 (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʻălîyâh (“roof chamber”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “roof chamber” (ʻălîyâh) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- Judges 3:20 shares the word «roof chamber» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “there” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
- These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
- The verb «וַיְהִ֥י» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
- Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes 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 6 words in this verse.
- “there” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on 2 Kings 4:11 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.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
Tyndale Open Resources
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
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.
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.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Rashi
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)
Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.