What Does Daniel 5:12 Mean in the King James?
Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the interpretation.
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 verse calls the hardest mystery a knot, and makes interpretation the act of loosening it.
THE MEANING
Understanding is more than gathering facts: it brings what is tangled into view and loosens it into meaning. The verse speaks now of insight as a living capacity that makes the hidden legible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Confusion is not proof that meaning is absent; the verse presents what is tangled as something that can be opened.
THE ROOT
קִטְרִין
qitrin
GROWS FROM
קטר
q-ṭ-r
To tie or bind; a knot or bond.
The Aramaic word translated “doubts” is qitrin, “knots.” The verse pictures difficult matters as bound together, so interpretation is not merely answering a question: it is loosening what is tangled.
ALSO GROWS
qĕṭar: To tie or bind.
קְטַר
The verb names the binding that makes the matter a knot.
qitrin: Knots or bonds.
קִטְרִין
This is the word in the verse; “doubts” carries the image of something tied up.
מְשָׁרֵא
meshare
GROWS FROM
שׁרא
š-r-ʾ
To loosen, unfasten, or release.
The word rendered “dissolving” means loosening or unfastening. Read beside “knots,” it shows the verse’s own movement: what is bound can be released into understanding.
ALSO GROWS
sherāʾ: To loosen or release.
שְׁרָא
This verb supplies the action beneath “dissolving.”
meshare: Loosening or unfastening.
מְשָׁרֵא
This form describes the act of untying the knots named in the verse.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
r-w-ḥ
Breath, wind, moving air.
The word the KJV renders “spirit” is ruach, also the word for breath and wind. Daniel’s excellence is joined to a word that holds those meanings together in one living image.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath.
רוּחַ
The same word rendered “spirit” here can name breath.
ruach: Wind.
רוּחַ
The same word can name moving air, as the connected verse makes visible.
THE PATTERN
Restoration begins by loosening what is bound.
Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.THE THREAD
Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.Daniel’s Aramaic “spirit” and Ezekiel’s Hebrew “wind” and “breath” are all ruach. The KJV’s different English words reveal one image: moving breath that animates what is lifeless.
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