What Does 2 Samuel 6:23 Mean in the King James?
Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
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 word for “child” shares its root with “to give birth,” so the verse names not only an absence but what is never brought forth.
THE MEANING
This verse gives lasting absence its full span, without making childlessness a measure of anyone’s worth. The word for “child” shares a root with “to give birth” and “generations,” so the absence reaches beyond a missing person to what is not brought forth. The opening “therefore” keeps this ending connected to the words around it.
THE ROOT
יֶלֶד
yeled
GROWS FROM
ילד
To give birth, beget, or bring forth.
English makes “child” look like a standalone noun; Hebrew keeps its birth-verb audible inside the word-family. The same root extends into תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot, “generations”), so the verse’s “no child” also touches what is not brought forth into a continuing line.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To give birth; to beget.
יָלַד
The verb and the noun share one root, joining the child to the act of bringing forth.
toledot: Generations; descendants.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The same root reaches from a child to what is carried onward through generations.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses birth and generation language to mark what is brought forth from a life and carried onward.
For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the LORD.The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.THE THREAD
For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.The Hebrew verb וַתֵּלֶד (vatteled, “and she gave birth”) comes from the same root as יֶלֶד (yeled, “child”) in this verse. One names what is brought forth; the other names its absence.
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