What Does Hosea 13:13 Mean?
The cords of a woman in labor will come upon him; he is an unwise son, for he does not stand long where children break through.
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
The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son; for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children.THE KEY
The “sorrows” are cords that grip, and the place of birth is a breaking point where emergence can fail.
THE MEANING
The verse places you at a birth threshold where pain tightens around you, while the unwise son cannot remain at the opening where children emerge. It holds the danger plainly: the moment of breaking forth has arrived, but the capacity to pass through it is absent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that reaching the threshold of birth means emergence is assured; here, the one in labor lacks the capacity to remain there.
THE ROOT
חֶבְלֵי
chevlei
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
To bind; a cord or rope.
“Sorrows” can sound like an inward feeling, but חֶבְלֵי pictures cords that grip. The same word describes the cords or pangs of death in Psalm 18:4, so this birth pain carries the weight of peril as well as emergence.
ALSO GROWS
chebel: Cord or rope.
חֶבֶל
It makes the labor image tangible: pain is pictured as something that binds and tightens.
chevlei mavet: Cords or pangs of death.
חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת
Psalm 18:4 uses the same word for death’s grip, linking the danger of labor with mortal peril.
מִשְׁבָּר
mishbar
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, fracture, or shatter.
“where children break through” in this verse is mishbar. The birth opening is named with a word from the root of breaking. English can make the place sound like a passive location; the Hebrew holds the force of a break through, where emergence and rupture meet.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb gives the birth threshold its force: something breaks open as life comes forth.
mishbar: A breaker or surge, and the birth threshold in this verse.
מִשְׁבָּר
The same word is used for the place of birth in Isaiah 37:3, where there is no strength to bring forth.
THE PATTERN
Birth imagery names the painful threshold where life is trying to emerge, and passage through that threshold is not assured.
And they said to him, Thus says Hezekiah, This day is a day of the narrow place, and of rebuke, and of spurning. For children have come to the place of breaking, and there is no strength to bring forth.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.THE THREAD
The cords of death wrap around me, and torrents of those who do not rise startle me.Hosea’s “sorrows of a travailing woman” and Psalm’s “sorrows of death” share חֶבְלֵי (chevlei), cords or pangs. The shared word lets birth and mortal danger speak in one image: the cords around emergence can also be the cords of death.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us