What Does Daniel 5:6 Mean in the King James?
Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.
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 same root that describes the king’s loosened joints later describes Daniel untying the knots of a mystery: terror unravels the body, while understanding unravels confusion.
THE MEANING
Fear can alter your face and loosen your body’s steadiness; inner disturbance becomes visible in the core and the knees. The verse recognizes how terror can move through thought and body together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that fear stays inside the mind: here it changes the face and interrupts the body’s control.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁתָּרַיִן
mištārāyin
GROWS FROM
שׁרא
š-r-ʾ
Aramaic: to loose, untie, release.
“loosed” in this verse is mištārāyin. The root שרא holds bodily loosening and the untying of a mental knot together. Here terror slackens the body’s ties; a few lines later, the same root describes Daniel loosening knots of doubt. English separates bodily collapse from mental clarification, while the root presents both as unfastening.
ALSO GROWS
šĕrāʾ: to loose, release
שְׁרָא
This verbal form names loosening as an act, the same action expressed here as the body’s joints coming slack.
mĕšārē: loosening, untying
מְשָׁרֵא
In Daniel 5:12 it appears with knots in the phrase KJV renders as ‘dissolving of doubts,’ making confusion something that can be untied.
THE PATTERN
Disturbance within becomes visible through involuntary movement or loss of bodily steadiness.
Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.THE THREAD
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 same Aramaic root שרא describes the loosing of the king’s joints here and Daniel’s ‘dissolving of doubts’ there, literally loosening knots. The chapter holds two kinds of unfastening together: terror loosens the body, while understanding loosens what is knotted in the mind.
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