Unfaithful, Unfaithfully

2 Chronicles 28:19 · Infinitive absolute + finite verb · 2026-08-10

כִּֽי הִכְנִ֤יעַ יְהוָה֙ אֶת יְהוּדָ֔ה בַּ עֲב֖וּר אָחָ֣ז מֶֽלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּ֤י הִפְרִ֨יעַ֙ בִּֽ יהוּדָ֔ה וּ מָעֹ֥ול מַ֖עַל בַּ יהוָֽה

For the LORD brought Judah low because of Ahaz king of Israel; for he made Judah naked, and transgressed sore against the LORD.

The KJV's 'transgressed sore against the LORD' reads as one strong verb of betrayal — vivid, but a single stroke of the brush.

The Hebrew doubles the root מעל (ma'al, 'to act unfaithfully, to betray a trust') against itself: מָעוֹל מַעַל — literally 'unfaithfulling, he was unfaithful.' The infinitive absolute (ma'ol) is stacked directly before the finite verb (ma'al, qal perfect, 'he was unfaithful'), a construction Hebrew uses to intensify or confirm an action beyond what a single verb can carry. English has no native way to say a verb twice for emphasis, so translators must collapse the pair into one word plus an adverb — 'transgressed sore,' 'acted very treacherously,' 'was utterly unfaithful.' Something is lost in every choice.

This is not decorative repetition. Ahaz's unfaithfulness toward the LORD (ba-YHWH, 'against the LORD') is not incidental treachery but treachery compounded upon treachery — an infidelity so total that ordinary grammar cannot hold it. The doubling forces the reader to feel the weight the historian intends: this was not a lapse but a betrayal certified twice over, in root and in form.

And yet the verse does not end with Ahaz's doubled treachery — it begins with the LORD's action: 'the LORD brought Judah low.' The God against whom Ahaz was unfaithful-unfaithfully is the same God still governing the humbling that follows, still sovereign over the consequences of a betrayal too large for one verb. That the text can name sin so precisely, doubling the very word for it, is itself an act of divine honesty — Scripture does not soften what covenant infidelity costs. But the God who lets the record stand so starkly is the same God who, elsewhere, doubles his own faithfulness — chesed upon chesed — never treacherous, never merely once-faithful. He is trustworthy exactly where Ahaz was not, and that asymmetry is the ground of hope.

Today

Name one place today where you have been quietly unfaithful in a trust — not dramatically, but doubly, in pattern — and confess it specifically, by name, to God.