What Does 1 Samuel 6:6 Mean in the King James?
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 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 heart’s hardening is a making-heavy, set against release: once the people are sent forth, they depart.
THE MEANING
A heart can grow heavy in the presence of wonders, keeping its grip even when power is visible. Yet the verse places that grip beside release: the people are sent out, and they depart. What feels constricting is not the last movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a hardened heart makes release impossible: even after resistance, the people are let go and depart.
THE ROOT
תְכַבְּדוּ
tekhabbedu
GROWS FROM
כבד
Be heavy; make weighty.
“harden / hardened” in this verse is tekhabbedu. The Hebrew verb literally makes the heart heavy. The verse’s image is not only resistance but weight gathering in the heart, even as wonders unfold.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the hardening concrete: the heart is burdened with weight.
kavod: Weight; honor, glory.
כָּבוֹד
The same root can name weight as well as honor, linking what is heavy with what carries weight.
kibbed: Honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
The root can describe giving weight to something; here that weight closes the heart around its grip.
וַיְשַׁלְּחוּם
vayeshalḥum
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send forth; release; let go.
The verb rendered “let the people go” is a sending forth. Hebrew holds release and departure in one movement: what is let go can go.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The sent waters are linked with restored sight, another opening made possible when what is held can move.
shulchan: Table; extended provision.
שֻׁלְחָן
The root’s image of sending or stretching forth also appears in provision extended to others.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitsrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
Bind, press in, constrict; the name echoes צַר (tzar), “narrow,” with the dual ending -ַיִם carrying the image of two narrows.
The Hebrew name מִצְרַיִם (Mitsrayim, Egypt) carries the image of constriction. Here the people depart from the narrow when they are sent forth.
ALSO GROWS
tzar: Narrow, constricting.
צַר
This names the constricted space from which the people are released.
metzar: Narrow place; distress.
מֵצַר
The branch gives constriction both a place and a felt pressure, sharpening the contrast with departure.
THE PATTERN
When a constricting hold breaks, release sends the bound into movement.
And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.THE THREAD
And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men.The same root, שָׁלַח (shalach, send forth or release), appears here as “send them out.” Release is an actual opening of the way: the people are sent forth, and they depart.
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