What Does 1 Kings 8:2 Mean in the King James?
And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the seventh month.
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 root qahal makes the gathering itself the form Israel takes as a people.
THE MEANING
Belonging becomes visible in shared presence: people gather at a common time around a common center. The verse holds individual lives within a people whose identity is expressed together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that spiritual belonging is only inward and individual; here, the people’s shared presence is part of their identity.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקָּהֲלוּ
wayyiqqahalu
GROWS FROM
קהל
q-h-l
Gather, assemble as a congregation.
English gives a verb, “assembled,” but qahal also names the assembled body as an assembly. The action and the people formed by it share one root: gathering makes the many legible as one people.
ALSO GROWS
qāhāl: Assembly, congregation.
קָהָל
The noun names the gathered people as a collective, showing that the verb’s action gives form to a community.
hiqhîl: Gather or cause to assemble.
הִקְהִיל
This causative form shows the root describing the act of bringing people into an assembly.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
Be whole, complete, or sound.
Solomon’s name belongs to the sh-l-m family, which also gives Hebrew its word for wholeness. The assembly gathers toward a shared center whose name carries that echo of wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This familiar branch makes the wholeness carried in Solomon’s name audible beneath its English form.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This adjective shows the root’s basic sense of completeness, deepening the resonance of the king’s name.
THE PATTERN
Shared gathering turns separate lives into a people able to hear, answer, and remain together.
A Song of degrees of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.THE THREAD
Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law:The word “Gather” uses the same קהל root as “assembled” here. It shows the assembly as a place where a people hear, learn, and respond together, revealing the inner motion of their gathering.
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