What Does 1 Kings 18:40 Mean?
And Elijah said to them, Seize the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them slip away. And they took them, and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slaughtered them there.
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
And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “slew” is also used for slaughtering offerings, so its ritual vocabulary remains audible in this killing.
THE MEANING
Here, “let not one escape” means exactly what the verse says: the prophets are seized and killed. The religious conflict reaches human bodies and ends in their deaths. The text leaves that violence visible as you read it now.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁחָטֵם
wayyishchatem
GROWS FROM
ש־ח־ט
sh-ḥ-ṭ
To slaughter or kill; commonly used for animal slaughter, including sacrificial slaughter.
“slaughtered” in this verse is wayyishchatem. The verb שָׁחַט (shāḥaṭ, to slaughter) is also used for slaughtering sacrificial animals. Here the same root names the killing of people, carrying the vocabulary of slaughter into the verse’s religious conflict.
ALSO GROWS
lishchot: To slaughter.
לִשְׁחֹט
In Genesis 22:10, this verb describes Abraham raising the knife to slay his son, making the shared root’s human cost plain.
wə-shāḥaṭ: And he shall slaughter.
וְשָׁחַט
In Leviticus 1:5, the same root describes slaughtering a bullock for an offering, showing the ritual use of the word.
THE PATTERN
Biblical judgment scenes can portray rival worship’s agents being removed through bodily destruction.
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be made to die; because he has spoken to turn you aside from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and ransomed you from the house of bondage, to push you off the way the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall burn out the evil from your midst.And it came to pass, as soon as he had finished drawing near with the rising offering, that Jehu said to the runners and to the captains, Go in and strike them down; let none come out. And they struck them with the mouth of the sword; and the runners and the captains threw them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal.And the beast is seized, and with him the false prophet who worked signs before him, by which he led astray those who received the engraving of the beast and those who bow down to his image. These two are thrown alive into a lake of fire burning with sulfur.THE THREAD
And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slaughter his son.Genesis 22:10 uses the same root, שָׁחַט (shāḥaṭ, to slaughter), as Elijah’s killing of the prophets. The shared verb holds an interrupted killing and a completed one inside a single word.
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