What Does Daniel 3:10 Mean in the King James?
Thou, O king, hast made a decree, that every man that shall hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, shall fall down and worship the golden image:
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 decree fuses hearing to posture: once the public sound is heard, every body is commanded to fall before a golden image.
THE MEANING
A decree links an audible cue to a bodily response: when the instruments sound, each person is to fall and bow before the golden image. The two actions make submission visible in the body. What the crowd hears becomes an enacted allegiance to an image of gold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that a visible bow proves uncoerced inward devotion: here the posture is prescribed by decree and triggered by sound.
THE ROOT
וְיִסְגֻּד
wəyisgud
GROWS FROM
סגד
To bow down or prostrate oneself.
“worship” in this verse is wəyisgud. The Aramaic verb names a bodily posture. Paired with “fall,” it shows that the decree prescribes visible submission, not merely an inward attitude.
ALSO GROWS
sāgad: To bow down or prostrate oneself.
סָגַד
Isaiah 44:15 uses this Hebrew cognate for bowing before a self-made image, so the same root makes the posture in Daniel concrete.
sajada: To prostrate oneself.
This cognate preserves the physical sense of the Aramaic verb: the act called worship is a body lowering itself.
יִשְׁמַע
yishmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear and attend; when response is implied, to hear and respond.
“hear” in this verse is yishmaʿ. The sound is more than music in the background: hearing it is the cue for a required response. The verse links what enters the ear directly to what the body must do.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; heed.
שְׁמַע
The familiar summons “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4) carries listening toward response, as the sound does in this decree.
shemuʿah: A report, tidings; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The same root can name a message received; here the instruments carry a public cue that dictates the next action.
THE PATTERN
Authority can turn a public sound or command into a prescribed bodily allegiance.
And he made him to ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried before him, Bow the knee: and he made him ruler over all the land of Egypt.Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.THE THREAD
Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto.Daniel’s Aramaic verb for worship shares its root with Isaiah’s Hebrew word translated “worshippeth.” Isaiah places the bow beside the maker’s own hands: the object before which the body falls is something the person has just shaped.
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