What Does 2 Kings 4:18 Mean in the King James?

And when the child was grown, it fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.

2 Kings 4:18 · KJV

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 grown child steps into a field whose workers are literally “cutters,” setting growth and cutting side by side.

THE MEANING

You see the child grow and go out to his father among the reapers. The verse holds two movements together: the child is growing while the field’s mature grain is being cut and gathered.

THE ROOT

הַקֹּצְרִים

haqqōṣĕrîm

GROWS FROM

קצר

qatsar

To cut down or reap; the same root also means to be short or to shorten.

The word rendered “reapers” names people by the cutting they do. Hebrew uses this same root for shortening, so the scene’s harvest work carries a quiet edge: growth and cutting occupy the same moment.

ALSO GROWS

qatsir: The crop or harvest being gathered.

קָצִיר

The harvest is named from the same root as the reapers who cut it.

qatsar: To become short or to shorten.

קָצַר

Isaiah 50:2 uses this root for a hand imagined as too short to deliver, opening another shade of meaning beneath the reapers’ cutting.

THE PATTERN

Growth enters the field where what has ripened is gathered.

And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.

Ruth 2:3 · KJVThe reapers mark the field as a place where mature grain is being gathered, while Ruth enters that same work to glean.

But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.

Mark 4:29 · KJVOnce the fruit has grown, the sickle and harvest follow; the verse makes ripening and gathering adjacent moments.

THE THREAD

Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst.

Isaiah 50:2 · KJV

The Hebrew behind “reapers” comes from qatsar, the same root Isaiah uses for “shortened.” Here it names the cutters of a harvest; Isaiah turns that root toward the question of whether a hand has become too short to deliver.

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