What Does 1 Chronicles 5:25 Mean in the King James?
And they transgressed against the God of their fathers, and went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land, whom God destroyed before them.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse’s two verbs turn one act into a sequence: first the bond is breached, then allegiance attaches elsewhere.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you about a bond breached and another allegiance pursued: it names the first as unfaithfulness to God and the second as sexual infidelity. It exposes the contradiction in pursuing the gods of a people whom God has destroyed before you. The betrayal is relational, and its object is bound to a people who did not endure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that allegiance can be shifted without breaking trust: the verse names pursuit of another god as infidelity to the bond with God.
THE ROOT
וַיִּמְעֲלוּ
vayyim'alu
GROWS FROM
מעל
m-ʿ-l
To act unfaithfully, deal treacherously, or breach a sacred trust.
“Transgressed” can sound like crossing a rule, but מָעַל names a breach of trust. The next verb, זָנָה, depicts that breach as intimate infidelity: the bond is violated, then another allegiance is pursued.
ALSO GROWS
ma'al: Treachery, unfaithfulness, or a breach of trust.
מַעַל
This noun makes clear that the verse names a betrayal of relationship, not merely a mistake.
me'ilah: Trespass or sacrilege.
מְעִילָה
This branch carries the breach into the sacred realm, illuminating the phrase “against the God of their fathers.”
וַיִּזְנוּ
vayyiznu
GROWS FROM
זנה
z-n-h
To commit sexual infidelity or prostitute oneself.
“went a whoring” in this verse is vayyiznu. The root זָנָה gives the verse its image of pursuing another as an intimate attachment. It shows that the turn from God is not presented as a neutral change of ideas, but as relational unfaithfulness.
ALSO GROWS
zonah: A prostitute.
זֹנָה
The personal form makes the sexual force of the verse explicit.
zenunim: Whoredom or acts of sexual unfaithfulness.
זְנוּנִים
This plural form links the verse’s image to repeated acts of divided allegiance.
THE PATTERN
When allegiance turns toward a rival power, scripture describes the turn as a breach of relationship.
Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;My people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff declareth unto them: for the spirit of whoredoms hath caused them to err, and they have gone a whoring from under their God.Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.THE THREAD
And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the LORD; but they did not so.Judges uses the same root זנה and unfolds the movement: refusing to hear, pursuing other gods, then turning from the way their fathers walked. It makes the image in Chronicles precise: the verse names a change of allegiance as infidelity.
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