What Does Daniel 3:7 Mean in the King James?
Therefore at that time, when all the people heard the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of musick, all the people, the nations, and the languages, fell down and worshipped the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up.
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 verb for setting up the image comes from the root for standing, so the scene pits one thing raised upright against a whole people made to fall.
THE MEANING
Music sounds, bodies move together, and unanimity appears where the verse names only a public act. The image is made by a king, yet every nation and language in the scene bends toward it. The verse speaks now about how spectacle and authority can make submission look like shared conviction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a bowed crowd must be freely convinced dissolves here: the cue follows an ultimatum, so public unanimity can be produced by coercion.
THE ROOT
הֲקִים
hăqîm
GROWS FROM
קום
q-w-m
Rise, stand; in a causative form, make stand or establish.
“set up” in this verse is hăqîm. The image is made to stand while the people fall before it. The root makes the verse’s power relation visible in the bodies: one thing is established upright at the cost of everyone else’s stance.
ALSO GROWS
qūm: Rise or stand.
קוּם
This root holds the crowd’s opposite posture in view: the image stands as the people go down.
māqōm: Place; a standing place.
מָקוֹם
The image is installed as the center of a public scene, claiming the place before which the crowd yields its own stance.
נָפְלִין
nephlîn
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
Fall, drop down.
“fell down” in this verse is nephlîn. The Aramaic names a literal falling before it names the bow that follows. Its Hebrew cognates also name downfall and collapse, giving the crowd’s posture the shape of public submission, not merely private reverence.
ALSO GROWS
nāphal: Fall or descend.
נָפַל
It keeps the physical motion in view: the people go down together.
mappālāh: Downfall or collapse.
מַפָּלָה
The related noun echoes how a crowd’s collective falling can become a collapse of independent stance.
THE PATTERN
When authority gives a made image a public claim on the body, allegiance becomes visible as a coerced act of bowing.
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;They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.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
And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.The same Aramaic root for falling appears here, and this verse makes the coercion explicit: refusal to fall means being thrown into the furnace. The crowd’s response in 3:7 follows that threat, so the music is a cue within an ultimatum.
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