What Does 1 Kings 11:8 Mean in the King James?
And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.
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
Accommodation becomes material here: each foreign wife’s devotion is given room for its own incense and sacrifice.
THE MEANING
The verse shows accommodation taking ritual form: the wives’ devotion receives space, incense burns, and sacrifices are offered to their gods. The pattern is present wherever what is welcomed into a shared life becomes a repeated practice with offerings attached.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that making room for another devotion keeps it separate from the life making room for it dissolves here: that accommodation gives the devotion a place to be enacted.
THE ROOT
מְקַטְּרוֹת
meqatterot
GROWS FROM
קטר
qatar
Make smoke; burn incense.
“burnt incense” in this verse is meqatterot. The same seed names both the act of making smoke and the incense that rises from it: English can separate the deed from its ritual substance. Here, the smoke marks devotion being enacted for each god.
ALSO GROWS
qetoret: Incense
קְטֹרֶת
This noun from the same root names what is burned, joining the rising smoke to the rite itself.
qitor: Smoke or vapor
קִיטוֹר
This branch names the visible plume, keeping the physical sign of the ritual inside the same word family.
מְזַבְּחוֹת
mezabbehot
GROWS FROM
זבח
zabach
Slaughter for an offering; sacrifice.
“sacrificed” in this verse is mezabbehot. This root links the act of sacrificing with the slaughtered offering and the altar where it is presented. The verse’s paired actions are concrete: incense rises, and an offering is made to each god.
ALSO GROWS
zebach: A sacrifice or slaughtered offering
זֶבַח
This noun names what is offered, making explicit what the verb in the verse enacts.
mizbeach: Altar
מִזְבֵּחַ
This related word names the place where the offering is made, giving the act a physical setting.
THE PATTERN
What receives service and offering reveals the allegiance a household makes room for.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.THE THREAD
Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.The same incense root appears in both verses: here the smoke marks offerings made to other gods; in the psalm, incense images prayer set before the LORD. The shared root makes the smoke a sign of where devotion is directed.
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