What Does 1 Kings 14:14 Mean?
Moreover the LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day. But what? Even now.
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
Moreover the LORD shall raise him up a king over Israel, who shall cut off the house of Jeroboam that day: but what? even now.THE KEY
The same act that makes a new king stand sets a dynasty’s severing in motion, and “even now” brings that rupture close.
THE MEANING
The LORD raises a king over Israel, and that king cuts Jeroboam’s house off; the verse holds establishment and destruction together. “That day” is followed by “even now,” making the severing feel immediate rather than remote. A standing order is not therefore a permanent one.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an established family line or political order is safe simply because it still stands.
THE ROOT
יַכְרִית
yakhrit
GROWS FROM
כרת
Cut, sever, or cut off.
This root also appears in the Hebrew phrase “cut a covenant,” so its language can mark a binding relation as well as a severing. Here its force is violent and dynastic: a household line is cut off, not merely displaced.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut; used with “covenant” in the phrase “cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת
The covenant phrase shows how this root can mark a bond; here the same root names a household’s severance.
nikrat: To be cut off or severed.
נִכְרַת
This form makes the severing something a line undergoes, illuminating the force of cutting off a house.
הֵקִים
heqim
GROWS FROM
קום
Rise or stand; in the causative form, make stand or establish.
“raise him up” in this verse is heqim. The form here is causative: the LORD makes a king stand over Israel. The same root gives מָקוֹם (maqom), “place,” linking the act of raising someone to the position they occupy.
ALSO GROWS
qum: To rise or stand.
קוּם
This is the root’s basic motion, made causative here as someone is set up to rule.
maqom: A place or position; a “standing place.”
מָקוֹם
The king is raised into a position over Israel, not merely brought into view.
THE PATTERN
The authority that raises rulers also governs when their place or power ends.
The LORD strips, and makes rich; he lays low, and lifts high.And he changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to those who know understanding.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.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 verb behind “cut off” shares the root כרת (karat) with the phrase translated “made a covenant” here. The root’s cutting can mark a binding relation or a severance; in the current verse, it is the house’s continuity that is severed.
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