What Does 1 Kings 8:37 Mean in the King James?
If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be caterpiller; if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities; whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be;
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 word behind “besiege” carries the image of being pressed into a narrow place, linking an enemy at the gates with every other form of trouble in the list.
THE MEANING
When scarcity, ruined crops, outbreak, siege, or illness narrows your world, this verse gives each pressure a place in the same prayer. No single kind of hardship has to stand alone or be made smaller before it can be named.
THE ROOT
יָצַר
yatsar
GROWS FROM
צרר
ts-r-r
to bind in, confine, or press into a narrow place
The verb behind “besiege” carries more than military encirclement: its root means to bind in or press into a narrow place. It makes the enemy at the gates one expression of the verse’s wider constriction, where hunger, ruined crops, outbreak, and sickness press life inward.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: narrow, tight
צַר
It gives the siege its sense of life being pressed into a tight place.
tsarah: distress, trouble
צָרָה
The same root family names the distress that comes from being hemmed in.
נֶגַע
negaʿ
GROWS FROM
נגע
n-g-ʿ
to touch, reach, or strike
The word behind “plague” belongs to a family of touching, reaching, and striking. The list names calamity not only by its scale, but as something that lands on a body or community.
ALSO GROWS
nagaʿ: to touch, reach, or strike
נָגַע
This verb shows the physical contact held inside the word translated “plague.”
naguaʿ: stricken, affected
נָגוּעַ
This branch names the one who has been reached or struck by affliction.
מַחֲלָה
maḥalah
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥ-l-h
to be sick or weak
The final phrase widens from a striking affliction to any sickness or weakness. This root family can name both illness and the sick person, giving the prayer language for the condition and the one living through it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥoleh: a sick person
חוֹלֶה
The branch makes clear that illness is held together with the person experiencing it.
ḥoli: sickness, illness
חֹלִי
This related noun repeats the word’s broad reach across kinds of illness.
THE PATTERN
When affliction narrows a life or community, scripture names the pressure and brings it into a cry or prayer that can be answered.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he saveth them out of their distresses.Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:THE THREAD
And let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.The verb “besiege” here and “distress” in Genesis 35:3 share the צרר (ts-r-r) family: binding or pressing in. Genesis uses צָרָה (tsarah, distress) for that narrowing, showing how siege language can name a person’s own trouble as well as a city’s.
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