What Does 1 Samuel 5:6 Mean in the King James?
But the hand of the LORD was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.
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 “heavy” hand carries the Hebrew root of weight: here the LORD’s force becomes bodily affliction and devastation.
THE MEANING
The verse names affliction landing on bodies and spreading across Ashdod’s territory. The LORD’s hand is heavy: divine power is not abstract here, but felt in bodies and place. The text holds the violence plainly, the people are struck, and Ashdod is laid waste.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the LORD’s hand always feels gentle: here it brings bodily affliction and devastation.
THE ROOT
וַתִּכְבַּד
vattikhbad
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
The same root links this heavy hand to כָּבוֹד (kavod), weight, and to making a heart heavy. English separates physical heaviness from honor and hardening, while Hebrew holds them in the same word-family; here that weight presses into bodies and place.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; weight carried as honor.
כָּבוֹד
It shares the root’s sense of weight, so the hand’s heaviness is concrete force, not merely a figure of speech.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
This branch shows that the root’s weight can also describe how much importance something is given.
tekhabbedu: You make heavy; translated “harden” in 1 Samuel 6:6.
תְּכַבְּדוּ
The same root describes a heart made heavy, echoing this verse’s heavy hand.
THE PATTERN
Divine judgment is depicted as a concrete affliction within bodies and the living world.
Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.The LORD will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed.And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.THE THREAD
Wherefore then do ye harden your hearts, as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? when he had wrought wonderfully among them, did they not let the people go, and they departed?The verb translated “harden” comes from כבד (k-b-d), the same root as “heavy” here; literally, it describes making the heart heavy. The same word thus names weight pressing upon bodies and weight held within a heart.
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