What Does 2 Samuel 8:12 Mean in the King James?
Of Syria, and of Moab, and of the children of Ammon, and of the Philistines, and of Amalek, and of the spoil of Hadadezer, son of Rehob, king of Zobah.
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
Consecration does not erase provenance: this list still names the peoples and ruler from whom the spoil comes.
THE MEANING
The verse keeps the sources attached to the wealth: whole peoples are named, then Hadadezer’s spoil. Read with the preceding verse, the gains are both dedicated to the LORD and marked by the violence of their taking. That remains true now: a sacred destination does not make a thing’s origin disappear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Once wealth is dedicated, how it was taken no longer matters.
THE ROOT
מִשְּׁלַל
miššĕlal
GROWS FROM
שלל
š-l-l
To strip away or take as plunder.
The Hebrew holds spoil as something stripped from someone, not as a detached category of wealth. The following verse dedicates these gains to the LORD, while this list keeps the people and ruler they came from in view.
ALSO GROWS
shalal: spoil, booty, plunder
שָׁלָל
This noun names the gains attributed here to Hadadezer.
shalal: to plunder or strip away
שָׁלַל
The verb exposes what the noun contains: the taking of something from those who had it.
רְחֹב
Reḥov
GROWS FROM
רחב
r-ḥ-b
To be broad, widen, or become spacious.
The name Rehob carries the sense of a broad or open place, an image hidden inside the genealogy. It adds the language of spaciousness to a verse that names the sources of plunder without softening them.
ALSO GROWS
raḥav: to become broad or spacious
רָחַב
This verb gives the root’s sense of widening.
reḥov: a broad place or open square
רְחֹב
This is the spatial image carried by Hadadezer’s father’s name.
THE PATTERN
Material wealth can be redirected toward the LORD while its source remains visible.
Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion: for I will make thine horn iron, and I will make thy hoofs brass: and thou shalt beat in pieces many people: and I will consecrate their gain unto the LORD, and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.And her merchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the LORD: it shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell before the LORD, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.THE THREAD
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.The same Hebrew root שלל (shalal), meaning to strip away or take as plunder, appears in “spoil” here and in Isaiah. Samuel names the peoples the spoil comes from; Isaiah describes its division, making the taking and handling of what is taken part of one visible thread.
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