What Does 1 Kings 14:18 Mean in the King James?
And they buried him; and all Israel mourned for him, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by the hand of his servant Ahijah the prophet.
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 root for “word” also names “he spoke” and “matter,” so the people’s mourning is the spoken word taking form.
THE MEANING
The word of the LORD reaches beyond a speaker’s mouth: it is present in the grief a people carries together. Through Ahijah, whose name is commonly understood as “YHWH is my brother”, the verse holds divine speech and human witness in the same scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a word is only sound and the event belongs to a separate world: here, the spoken word and the grief lived by the people are joined.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dābār
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; a word or matter, thing.
The same root names a spoken word and a matter or thing, so “word” holds more than a message: speech and what happens are joined in Hebrew. Ahijah’s name (אֲחִיָּהוּ, ʾAḥiyyāhû), commonly understood as “YHWH is my brother,” gives the messenger a nature of kinship even as the verse names the LORD as the word’s source.
ALSO GROWS
dibbēr: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The same root appears in “which he spake,” directly linking the word to the act of speaking.
devarim: Words; matters or things.
דְּבָרִים
This branch keeps the root’s range visible: what is spoken can also be a matter that people encounter.
THE PATTERN
A word spoken by God takes form in events people can encounter.
God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word, דָּבָר (dābār), as this verse’s “word.” Its root also carries the sense of a matter or thing, opening the connection between the spoken word and the grief the people experience.
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