What Does 2 Samuel 18:7 Mean in the King James?
Where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of twenty thousand men.
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 repeats one root for the people being struck down and for the slaughter itself, joining the victims and the blow in a single word-family.
THE MEANING
This verse meets the reader now with a defeat that cannot be reduced to which side stands before the other: twenty thousand people are struck down in one day. The number makes the human cost part of the outcome, impossible to fold into a clean account of who prevailed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A side’s success can be told as though its human cost were separate. Here the slaughter is part of the outcome itself.
THE ROOT
וַיִּנָּגְפוּ
vayyinnāgĕp̄û
GROWS FROM
נ־ג־ף
n-g-p
Strike, smite, or strike down.
Beneath the distinct English words “slain” and “slaughter,” Hebrew holds a common root: וַיִּנָּגְפוּ (vayyinnāgĕp̄û, “they were struck down”) and הַמַּגֵּפָה (hammaggēp̄āh, “the slaughter” or “plague”) belong to the same word-family. The noun’s nun is assimilated before gimel, making the shared root less visible on the surface; the language binds the striking down and its devastation together.
ALSO GROWS
nāgaph: To strike or smite.
נָגַף
This verb is the root beneath “were slain,” presenting the people as those struck down.
maggēphāh: A blow, plague, or slaughter.
מַגֵּפָה
This noun names the devastating event with the same root that describes the people being struck down.
דָּוִד
Dāwîḏ
GROWS FROM
ד־ו־ד
d-w-d
Beloved; the beloved one.
David’s name is linked to belovedness, a nature carried by the name of the leader whose servants stand before the fallen. That name does not soften the verse’s casualty count; belovedness and mass death remain side by side.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: Beloved; also a kinsman or uncle, depending on context.
דּוֹד
This word shares the name’s consonants and carries the sense of belovedness.
dōdîm: Loves or expressions of affection.
דּוֹדִים
This related form extends the same word-family into the language of love and affection.
THE PATTERN
Scripture keeps violent loss visible by giving the dead a count, a voice, or a witness.
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:THE THREAD
And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent: and there was a very great slaughter; for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen.The Hebrew verb נִגַּף (nigaph, “was struck down”) in this verse shares the root נ־ג־ף (n-g-p, “strike down”) with the verb and slaughter noun in 2 Samuel 18:7. English presents “smitten” and “slaughter” as separate terms, while the root keeps the striking down and its human cost connected.
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