What Does 2 Samuel 14:7 Mean in the King James?
And, behold, the whole family is risen against thine handmaid, and they said, Deliver him that smote his brother, that we may kill him, for the life of his brother whom he slew; and we will destroy the heir also: and so they shall quench my coal which is left, and shall not leave to my husband neither name nor remainder upon the earth.
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 threat is not only to kill a person: it is to extinguish the final ember through which a family can still have a future.
THE MEANING
The threat widens from the death of one brother to the killing of the only heir, leaving a household with no living continuation or name to remain. The woman pictures that last survivor as an ember: the family’s future is still alive, but exposed to being put out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that killing the guilty person will contain the violence: the threat reaches for the heir and the family’s remaining name as well.
THE ROOT
וְכִבּוּ
wəḵibbû
GROWS FROM
כבה
k-b-h
To go out or be extinguished; in a causative form, to extinguish or put out.
“quench” in this verse is wəḵibbû. The same root can describe a flame going out and someone putting it out. Here the threat names the deliberate extinguishing of what remains alive in the family.
ALSO GROWS
kāvāh: To go out or be extinguished
כָּבָה
This form shows the root from the side of the flame that ceases to burn.
kibbāh: To extinguish or put out
כִּבָּה
This form makes the human action explicit: someone puts out the remaining flame.
גַּחַלְתִּי
gaḥaltî
GROWS FROM
גחל
g-ḥ-l
A glowing coal or ember.
The coal is singular and described as what is left: a small, live remnant carries the possibility of continued life. Calling the heir a coal makes the threatened future visible as something still glowing, not something already gone.
ALSO GROWS
gachelet: An ember or glowing coal
גַּחֶלֶת
The singular form holds the focus on the one remaining spark.
gechalim: Coals or embers
גֶּחָלִים
The plural form shows that the same live coal can belong to a larger fire; here one ember remains from what once burned.
הַיּוֹרֵשׁ
hayyōrēš
GROWS FROM
ירש
y-r-sh
To take possession or inherit; in some forms and contexts, to dispossess.
The heir is the one who receives and carries forward what belongs to the family. The threat to kill him therefore reaches beyond a single life toward the household’s inheritance and continuity.
ALSO GROWS
yāraš: To inherit, possess, or dispossess
יָרַשׁ
The same root can describe receiving a possession or driving another from it, giving the threatened succession a stark edge.
yerushah: Inheritance or possession
יְרֻשָּׁה
This noun makes clear that the heir’s life is tied to what the household has left to pass on.
THE PATTERN
A remnant can keep a future alive after the larger whole has been cut down.
For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.THE THREAD
A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.The verb translated “quench” comes from כבה (k-b-h), meaning to go out or to extinguish, the same root used here. This verse threatens to put out the last coal; Isaiah pictures a faint, smoking wick that is not extinguished.
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