Bible Strands
2 Chronicles 21:15
And day after day you yourself will suffer from a severe illness, a disease of your bowels, until it causes your bowels to come out.’”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD pronounces judgment against King Jehoram through a prophetic declaration, positioned immediately before stirring the Philistines and Arabs to attack him (2 Chronicles 21:14-16).
The words — בְּ/מַחֲלֵ֣ה (be./ma.cha.Leh) = in/ [the] sickness of, combined with מֵעֶ֑י/ךָ (me.'Ei./kha) = bowels/ your, pin the coming affliction to a specific anatomical site.
The thread — The text's prediction is recorded as fulfilled in 2 Chronicles 21:18, structurally parallels the graphic physical rupture in Acts 1:18, and follows the covenantal curse pattern of Numbers 5:27.
Why it lands — It forces the reader to confront the reality that divine judgment operates through sequential historical events and documented physical decay, requiring direct accountability rather than abstracted theology.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day.
Cross-references
- 2 Chronicles 21:18 After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels.
- Acts 1:18 (Now with the reward for his wickedness Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong and burst open in the middle, and all his intestines spilled out.
- Numbers 5:27 When he has made her drink the water, if she has defiled herself and been unfaithful to her husband, then the water that brings a curse will enter her and cause bitter suffering; her belly will swell, her thigh will shrivel, and she will become accursed among her people.
- Deuteronomy 28:27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors and scabs and itch from which you cannot be cured.
- Deuteronomy 28:37 You will become an object of horror, scorn, and ridicule among all the nations to which the LORD will drive you.
- Deuteronomy 28:59 He will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary disasters, severe and lasting plagues, and terrible and chronic sicknesses.
- Deuteronomy 28:61 The LORD will also bring upon you every sickness and plague not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
- Deuteronomy 28:67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were evening!’ and in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’—because of the dread in your hearts of the terrifying sights you will see.
- Psalms 109:18 The cursing that he wore like a coat, may it soak into his body like water, and into his bones like oil.
- Acts 12:23 Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.