What Does Daniel 3:15 Mean in the King James?

Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

Daniel 3:15 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The king’s deepest threat is not the furnace but the claim that his hands mark the limit of every possible deliverance.

THE MEANING

The order reaches your body through sound: when the music plays, you fall before the image or face the fire. The king’s hands are made into a claimed boundary: he can cast those who refuse into the furnace and asks who could pull them out. The verse exposes the leap from having lethal force to claiming final authority.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

This undoes the belief that whoever can hurt you also decides whether any deliverance can reach you.

THE ROOT

תִסְגְּדוּן

tisgedun

GROWS FROM

סגד

sgd

To bow down, to prostrate oneself.

The Aramaic verb rendered “worship” means bowing down in prostration; the preceding “fall down” makes the demanded posture explicit. Cognate Semitic words for prostration and a place of prostration keep the body’s motion inside the English word “worship”: this order demands visible submission.

ALSO GROWS

sujūd: Arabic: prostration.

It names the bodily act encoded in the Aramaic command, showing that “worship” here includes the body bent low.

masjid: Arabic: mosque; a place of prostration.

The cognate root names a place organized around prostration, keeping posture at the center of this word family.

THE PATTERN

An image’s claim to rule is enacted through bodies made to bow, while that posture can be withheld.

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;

Exodus 20:5 · KJVThe prohibition joins bodily bowing to serving, exposing the posture as an act of allegiance.

Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

1 Kings 19:18 · KJVThe unbowed knees make refusal visible: allegiance is expressed through the body’s posture.

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.

Revelation 13:15 · KJVThe image’s demand is backed by execution, exposing the threat behind coerced worship.

THE THREAD

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king.

Daniel 3:17 · KJV

The king asks who can deliver them from his hands; this reply names God as able to deliver them from the furnace and from the king’s hand. The threat remains real, but the king’s claim to set the limits of deliverance is challenged.

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