What Does 2 Kings 6:5 Mean in the King James?
But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water: and he cried, and said, Alas, master! for it was borrowed.
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 Hebrew for “borrowed” grows from “ask,” so the missing iron carries the weight of a request and the responsibility it created.
THE MEANING
When something you asked to use disappears, its absence carries both practical loss and responsibility to the person who lent it. That distress can be spoken plainly: “Alas, master!”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that an ordinary material loss is too trivial to name: the missing axe head and the obligation attached to it are spoken aloud.
THE ROOT
שָׁאוּל
sha'ul
GROWS FROM
שׁאל
To ask or request.
The word translated “borrowed” is sha’ul, built on sha’al, “to ask” or “request”: the axe is something he had asked to use. The same root describes borrowing in Exodus 22:14, so the cry carries the obligation built into that request, not only the shock of seeing iron sink.
ALSO GROWS
sha'al: To ask or request.
שָׁאַל
The borrowed object is something asked for, linking the loss to the request that placed it in his care.
she'elah: A request or petition.
שְׁאֵלָה
This branch keeps the sense of asking visible inside the word rendered “borrowed.”
sha'ul: Borrowed; asked for to use.
שָׁאוּל
This is the form used for the missing axe head, so the word itself carries the history of how it came into his hands.
THE PATTERN
A need becomes a point of meeting when it is brought into words.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.THE THREAD
And if a man borrow ought of his neighbour, and it be hurt, or die, the owner thereof being not with it, he shall surely make it good.The word translated “borrow” in both places grows from שאל, “ask” or “request.” Exodus names the obligation attached to a borrowed object; that shared root reveals why the lost axe head is more than a mishap, the request itself leaves the man answerable for what he holds.
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