What Does Daniel 7:7 Mean in the King James?
After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
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 beast’s signature is a sequence of consumption, crushing, and trampling that reaches even what remains.
THE MEANING
The vision shows power that consumes, breaks apart, and tramples what is left. Its violence is a process of reduction, not a single blow. The verse speaks now wherever people are treated as material to use up and discard.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The vision undoes the assumption that exceptional strength or difference signals a higher order; here, the beast’s difference is shown through the reach of its destruction.
THE ROOT
אֲכַלַת
ʾakhalat
GROWS FROM
אכל
eat, consume
“devoured” in this verse is ʾakhalat. The Aramaic verb comes from the same root as ordinary eating and food. The image makes domination an appetite: the beast does not simply defeat what it encounters; it consumes it.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākhal: eat
אָכַל
The shared verb root makes the beast’s violence an act of consuming.
maʾakhal: food, that which is eaten
מַאֲכָל
This branch completes the image: what the beast consumes is treated as food.
וּמְדַקְּקָה
u-medaqqeqah
GROWS FROM
דקק
crush, make fine
“brake in pieces” in this verse is u-medaqqeqah. The word carries the sense of crushing something down into small pieces. The beast’s appetite is followed by reduction, and even the residue is trampled underfoot.
ALSO GROWS
daq: fine, thin, small
דַּק
The related form points toward what has been reduced to something fine and small.
daqaq: crush, pulverize
דָּקַק
This branch makes the force of “brake in pieces” vivid: what remains is broken down further.
THE PATTERN
Predatory power is pictured as an appetite that consumes people, breaks them down, and claims dominion.
Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.THE THREAD
There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.The Hebrew verb “devour” comes from אכל (ʾ-k-l), the same root as the Aramaic word here. The teeth and appetite in Proverbs make visible what Daniel’s beast does: it turns people into what can be consumed.
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