What Does 1 Kings 13:6 Mean in the King James?
And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Intreat now the face of the LORD thy God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored me again. And the man of God besought the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored him again, and became as it was before.
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 Hebrew names healing as return: the hand comes back to its former condition.
THE MEANING
Now the verse names restoration as return: the hand comes back to its condition before the loss. It also holds vulnerability in view, as the king asks another to plead for him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
An impaired capacity can never return to the condition it had before.
THE ROOT
וַתָּשָׁב
wattāšov
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To return or turn back.
The Hebrew verb beneath “restored” means “returned”: the king asks for his hand to return, and the verse says it returned. This root also gives words for turning back and restoring, so recovery is pictured as a return to prior capacity.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch carries the root’s sense of return as a turning, the same movement expressed by the hand’s recovery.
meshovev: Restorer; one who brings something back.
מְשׁוֹבֵב
Isaiah uses this form for a restorer of paths, extending the hand’s return to a way made usable again.
חַל־נָא
ḥal-nā
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥālāh
To be sick or weak; in the intensive form, to entreat or plead.
“intreat / besought” in this verse is ḥal-nā. The king’s request and the man of God’s response use the same root, though the KJV renders the forms “intreat” and “besought.” Its wider range includes sickness and weakness, placing the plea within the vocabulary of vulnerability.
ALSO GROWS
ḥolî: Sickness, illness.
חֹלִי
This noun shows the root describing bodily affliction, while the verse uses it for pleading.
ḥal-nā: Please entreat; beseech.
חַל־נָא
The king uses this form to ask for an appeal; the prophet’s later plea repeats the same root.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes restoration as a return toward wholeness, whether of a living self, a hand, or a path.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.THE THREAD
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.The psalm’s verb יְשׁוֹבֵב (yeshovev, restores or returns) shares שׁוּב (shuv, return) with the hand’s restoration here. Its object is נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, my living soul), so one root links the return of a hand’s capacity with the return of the living self.
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