What Does 1 Kings 9:21 Mean in the King James?
Their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day.
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
Being spared from destruction does not mean being freed: the survivors are made into a levy of forced labor.
THE MEANING
The verse sets survival beside subjection: Solomon subjects the remaining people to a labor levy, and the burden continues “unto this day.” It holds a truth that remains present: a person can survive violence and still remain under coercive power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that surviving violence means being free from it: the people remain, but their labor is taken by force.
THE ROOT
עֹבֵד
oved
GROWS FROM
עבד
to work or serve
“bondservice” in this verse is oved. The root holds work and service together, while the phrase מַס עֹבֵד (mas oved) places that service under a levy: the labor is compelled. “Service” here carries the weight of work imposed by power, not freely offered help.
ALSO GROWS
avad: to serve or work
עָבַד
The verb shows the root’s basic range; in this verse the work is assigned by a ruler’s levy.
eved: servant or worker
עֶבֶד
This related noun names the person placed in service, bringing the people subjected to the levy into view.
avodah: work, labor, or service
עֲבֹדָה
This branch makes the labor sense explicit and links the verse’s “bondservice” to the work itself.
THE PATTERN
Power can take control of human labor through compulsory work or by withholding what workers are owed.
Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.Both passages draw on עבד, the root of work and service; Exodus makes the coercion unmistakable by describing lives made bitter through hard service. It brings the full weight of the root into Kings: this “service” is labor under compulsion.
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