What Does 2 Chronicles 10:11 Mean in the King James?
For whereas my father put a heavy yoke upon you, I will put more to your yoke: my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.
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 root behind “heavy” also gives Hebrew its word for weight and honor, exposing authority in the weight it chooses to place on people.
THE MEANING
The verse names an existing burden and shows power choosing to increase it. Whips and scorpions make the cost explicit: this intensification is pain inflicted on the body.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an inherited burden is fixed: the one who receives it still chooses whether to add weight.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
The yoke’s “heavy” is כָּבֵד (kaved), from כבד (k-b-d), the same root family as כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight and honor). English separates heaviness from honor, while Hebrew holds them together: here the ruler makes his authority felt as weight imposed on others.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; honor.
כָּבוֹד
The same root connects the yoke’s physical heaviness with the weight or honor attributed to authority.
hikhbid: To make heavy; to weigh down.
הִכְבִּיד
This branch makes the action behind the verse vivid: a burden becomes heavier when someone adds weight to it.
יִסַּר
yissar
GROWS FROM
יסר
y-s-r
To discipline, instruct, or correct.
Both the father’s and the son’s “chastised” come from יָסַר (yāsar, to discipline or correct). The root also yields language for instruction, but here whips and scorpions make the action concrete as painful coercion.
ALSO GROWS
musar: Discipline; instruction.
מוּסָר
It shows the root can name instruction as well as punishment, sharpening the contrast with the whips and scorpions in this verse.
yissurim: Chastisements; afflictions.
יִסּוּרִים
This related word keeps the root’s painful sense in view, matching the verse’s explicit instruments of punishment.
THE PATTERN
The character of power is revealed by what it does to people already bearing a yoke.
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.I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that ye should not be their bondmen; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright.For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.THE THREAD
And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.The word KJV renders “honoured” comes from כבד (k-b-d, to be weighty), the same root behind “heavy.” The shared root connects weight imposed as a burden with weight recognized as honor.
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