Bible Strands
2 Kings 24:4
and also for the innocent blood he had shed. For he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD was unwilling to forgive.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The biblical narrator explains the cause of Judah's exile, attributing the nation's removal from God's presence to the accumulated guilt of Manasseh and his successor.
The words — The Hebrew term נָקִי (naqi) translates literally to "innocent" or "blameless," paired with דָּם (dam, "blood") to denote unjust killings. The verb מָלֵא (male, "filled") emphasizes the complete saturation of Jerusalem with this violence.
The thread — This motif of blood-pollution recurs in 2 Kings 21:16, which explicitly credits Manasseh with filling Jerusalem with innocent blood, and aligns with the legal principle in Numbers 35:33 and Deuteronomy 19:10 that land cannot be cleansed of unexpiated murder.
Why it lands — The text establishes that persistent, unrepented violence against the innocent provokes divine refusal to forgive, requiring readers to recognize that collective guilt accumulates until judgment becomes irreversible.
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 also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon.
Cross-references
- 2 Kings 21:16 Moreover, Manasseh shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end, in addition to the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, doing evil in the sight of the LORD.
- Numbers 35:33 Do not pollute the land where you live, for bloodshed pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land on which the blood is shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.
- Deuteronomy 19:10 Thus innocent blood will not be shed in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, so that you will not be guilty of bloodshed.
- Psalms 106:38 They shed innocent blood—the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood.
- Jeremiah 2:34 Moreover, your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor, though you did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things
- Jeremiah 15:1 Then the LORD said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel should stand before Me, My heart would not go out to this people. Send them from My presence, and let them go!
- Ezekiel 33:25 Therefore tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘You eat meat with the blood in it, lift up your eyes to your idols, and shed blood. Should you then possess the land?
- Jeremiah 19:4 because they have abandoned Me and made this a foreign place. They have burned incense in this place to other gods that neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have ever known. They have filled this place with the blood of the innocent.
- Lamentations 3:42 “We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven.”