What Does 2 Kings 9:8 Mean in the King James?
For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel:
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 “cut off” also appears in “cut a covenant”: one root names both a bond’s formation and a line’s severing.
THE MEANING
The verse declares Ahab’s whole house lost, naming its male line and even the one shut up and left in Israel. Its paired images of perishing and cutting off leave no remnant in view.
THE ROOT
וְהִכְרַתִּי
we-hikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
Cut, sever.
The verb is a form of כרת, so “cut off” retains the concrete image of cutting away. The same root forms “cut a covenant” and “divorce,” gathering covenant-making and formal separation under one seed; here it gives the household’s destruction the language of severance.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: Make or establish a covenant, literally expressed as cutting one.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The root behind the household’s severing also names the forming of a covenant.
keritut: A divorce or formal separation.
כְּרִיתוּת
This branch makes the root’s language of severance concrete.
אָבַד
avad
GROWS FROM
אבד
Perish, be lost; lose the way.
“perish” in this verse is avad. The root holds both perishing and lostness, so the declaration carries a shade of disappearance as well as death. Beside “cut off,” it says the house is both lost and severed.
ALSO GROWS
avedah: Something lost; a loss.
אֲבֵדָה
This branch shows the root’s sense of becoming lost.
avaddon: Destruction or ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
It intensifies the same movement from loss to destruction.
THE PATTERN
When judgment is described as total, scripture names what is cut away or makes it impossible to find any remnant.
Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel,For I will rise up against them, saith the LORD of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the LORD.And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.THE THREAD
Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel,The same root, כרת (karat, “cut”), appears in “cut off,” and nearly the whole sentence returns here. That shared wording makes the current verse’s declaration of a whole house concrete: the severing reaches the line and the one shut up and left.
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