What Does Daniel 3:6 Mean in the King James?
And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.
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
Here, worship becomes a visible posture: the body bows, or it faces the fire.
THE MEANING
The image demands a fall and a prostration, and refusal is answered with fire. “The same hour” leaves no pause between noncompliance and punishment; the threat is immediate. The verse speaks now wherever power uses threatened violence to demand visible allegiance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a demanded gesture is merely symbolic: here, refusing the act carries an explicit death sentence.
THE ROOT
יִסְגֻּד
yisgud
GROWS FROM
סגד
s-g-d
To bow down or prostrate oneself.
“worshippeth” in this verse is yisgud. The Aramaic verb names a bodily lowering, so the demand is visible posture as well as allegiance. Paired with the separate command to fall, it shows that the required gesture is deliberate submission, not an abstract belief.
ALSO GROWS
tisgedun: You (plural) bow down or worship.
תִּסְגְּדוּן
The plural command in Daniel 3:5 makes the demanded bodily gesture explicit.
nisegud: We bow down or worship.
נִסְגֻּד
In Daniel 3:18, the three speakers refuse this same act, naming the allegiance hidden inside the gesture.
יִפֵּל
yippel
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
To fall or go down.
“falleth” in this verse is yippel. The first demand is spatial: a person must go down before the image. Beside the separate verb for worship, this root makes the required allegiance visible in the body’s stance.
ALSO GROWS
nofel: Falling; one who falls.
נֹפֵל
This form keeps the verse’s focus on a person’s bodily descent.
mapalah: A downfall or collapse.
מַפָּלָה
The same root can name a fall as an outcome, echoing the danger imposed on anyone who refuses the demanded posture.
יִתְרְמֵא
yitreme
GROWS FROM
רמא
r-m-a
To throw or cast.
“cast” in this verse is yitreme. The passive verb makes the threatened person the object of force: the sentence does not say they enter the fire, but that someone throws them there. The same verb’s active form in the next verse names the hands carrying out the threat.
ALSO GROWS
lerama: To cast or throw.
לְרָמָא
Daniel 3:20 uses this form when the king orders the men to be thrown into the furnace.
uremiu: And they cast or threw.
וּרְמִיוּ
Daniel 3:21 names the agents carrying out the sentence with the active form of this root.
THE PATTERN
Power turns visible allegiance into a life-or-death test by attaching punishment to refusal.
And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had shewed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai.All the presidents of the kingdom, the governors, and the princes, the counsellors, and the captains, have consulted together to establish a royal statute, and to make a firm decree, that whosoever shall ask a petition of any God or man for thirty days, save of thee, O king, he shall be cast into the den of lions.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
But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.The Aramaic verb for bowing down and worshipping is the same in both verses. Here the furnace names the cost of refusal; in 3:18, the three speakers state plainly that the demanded gesture will not become allegiance, even under that threat.
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