What Does 1 Kings 11:16 Mean?
For six months Joab settled there with all Israel, until he had cut off every male in Edom.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
(For six months did Joab remain there with all Israel, until he had cut off every male in Edom:)THE KEY
The root beneath “cut off” also appears in “cutting” a covenant, so Hebrew holds eradication and covenant-making in one image of severance.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with the full scope of a six-month campaign: Joab and all Israel remain until every male in Edom is cut off. Its violence names an entire male population as the target.
THE ROOT
הַכְרִית
hakhrît
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
to cut, sever, or cut off
“cut off” in this verse is hakhrît. The same root appears in כָּרַת בְּרִית (kārat berît, “cut a covenant”), so Hebrew lets cutting name both a covenant rite and the elimination of a people. Here, the object, every male in Edom, makes the verb’s violence concrete.
ALSO GROWS
kārat berît: Literally “cut a covenant”; idiomatically, make a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same root appears in covenant-making, revealing that its cutting image can mark a binding rite as well as violent removal.
nikrat: Be cut off; be severed.
נִכְרַת
This form preserves the image of severing and shows how the root can describe a person or group being removed.
THE PATTERN
The Hebrew root כרת (kārat, cut or sever) carries the image of cutting into both removal and covenant-making, with the object determining its force.
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.For the evildoers will be cut off, and those stretched toward the LORD will inherit the land.And I will give the men who have crossed over my covenant, who did not make the words of the covenant stand that they cut before me, when they cut the calf in two and passed between its pieces.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The Hebrew phrase כָּרַת בְּרִית (kārat berît, “cut a covenant”) uses the same root כרת (kārat, cut or sever) found in “cut off” here. The shared image makes the violent force of the root visible without equating the two acts.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us