What Does 1 Samuel 8:13 Mean in the King James?
And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
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
A ruler’s reach enters the household when he claims daughters’ skilled hands for his own service.
THE MEANING
This verse names power that enters a household and assigns the daughters’ work to the ruler. The specific tasks, compounding fragrance, cooking, and baking, make the taking concrete: what is claimed includes their skill and daily labor. The line lets you recognize how authority reaches into ordinary life when it claims another person’s work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that domination stays in public decisions or military force; this verse shows it entering the household and claiming women’s work.
THE ROOT
לְרַקָּחוֹת
lə-raqqāḥōt
GROWS FROM
רקח
רקח (r-q-ḥ): to mix or compound, especially aromatic substances.
“confectionaries” in this verse is lə-raqqāḥōt. The Hebrew names perfumers or ointment-compounders, so the line points to skilled fragrance-making rather than sweets as the modern word can suggest. The root ties the worker to the compound she prepares: the king claims not only the daughters’ presence but their trained hands and craft.
ALSO GROWS
rōqēaḥ: Perfumer; one who compounds aromatic ingredients.
רֹקֵחַ
In Exodus 30:25 this is the skilled maker of the ointment, showing that the daughters’ named role is a craft of blending.
mirqaḥat: A compound, mixture, or blended ointment.
מִרְקַחַת
The word names the prepared mixture made by the רֹקֵחַ (rōqēaḥ), a perfumer; the shared consonants ר־ק־ח join the craft and its product.
THE PATTERN
When a ruler treats people as possessions, the reach of rule extends into their labor and the resources that sustain them.
And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.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.But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.THE THREAD
And thou shalt make it an oil of holy ointment, an ointment compound after the art of the apothecary: it shall be an holy anointing oil.The daughters’ role and the ointment-maker share the Hebrew root רקח (r-q-ḥ), meaning to mix or compound. Exodus places that root beside the compound itself, making the skilled perfumery named in 1 Samuel concrete.
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