What Does 1 Kings 21:20 Mean in the King James?

And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the LORD.

1 Kings 21:20 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

Ahab calls the truth-teller his enemy, while the Hebrew of “sold thyself” names him as both the seller and what he has sold.

THE MEANING

When you are exposed, the one naming your course can feel like your enemy. Yet the verse turns attention to the self you have handed over to do harm, fully visible to the LORD.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The lie is that whoever exposes your harm must be your enemy; the verse locates the deeper conflict in having handed yourself over to do it.

THE ROOT

הִתְמַכֶּרְךָ

hitmakkerkha

GROWS FROM

מכר

m-k-r

to sell, to transfer in a sale

“sold thyself” in this verse is hitmakkerkha. The Hebrew form is reflexive: Ahab is the seller and what is sold at once. The word gives his evil the shape of a self handed over to a course, with nothing hidden from the LORD’s sight.

ALSO GROWS

makhar: to sell

מָכַר

This is the base verb beneath Ahab’s reflexive form, naming the act of handing something over.

mimkār: a sale; something sold

מִמְכָּר

This noun carries the root into the transaction itself, sharpening the image of a self made over to a course of action.

THE PATTERN

What you yield yourself to becomes a binding force that shapes your actions.

And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.

2 Kings 17:17 · KJVThe plural wording repeats Ahab’s self-sale at a communal scale: they sell themselves to do evil before the LORD.

His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.

Proverbs 5:22 · KJVThe image of being caught by one’s own cords shows a course of action binding the one who follows it.

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

Romans 6:16 · KJVThe verse states the pattern directly: the one you yield yourself to obey becomes your master.

THE THREAD

And the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

Deuteronomy 28:68 · KJV

The same Hebrew root ⁨מכר⁩ appears here in a plural reflexive form: a people “sell themselves” into servitude. Ahab’s singular self-sale opens into the same root’s collective image of surrender and bondage.

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