What Does Deuteronomy 12:3 Mean in the King James?
And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place.
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 command reaches from destroying objects to erasing names, the identity that remains attached to a people in a place.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now in an uncompromising command: altars are overturned, pillars broken, groves burned, images cut down, and names erased from that place. Its reach is both physical and public, extending from worship objects to the identity associated with them.
THE ROOT
וְאִבַּדְתֶּם
veʾibbadtem
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
Perish or be lost; in the Piʿel, cause to perish or destroy.
“destroy” in this verse is veʾibbadtem. This verb comes from a root whose range includes perishing and being lost; its Piʿel form means causing loss or destruction. Its object is their name, שְׁמָם (shemam, “their name or identity”), from שֵׁם (shem, “name as nature”): the line’s last act reaches beyond images to the identity represented by them.
ALSO GROWS
avad: Perish; be lost.
אָבַד
The same root describes disappearance from the subject’s side, revealing what the causative form does here: it makes the name disappear.
avaddon: Destruction; ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This noun names the ruin associated with the verb, showing how the line’s final command presses toward erasure.
THE PATTERN
A break with a competing practice becomes visible through the public removal of the objects that carry it.
And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father’s young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it:And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men.Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.THE THREAD
And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.Both verses use אבד (avad, “perish or be lost; cause to perish”) for destruction. Deuteronomy 7:24 adds “from under heaven,” making erasure of a people’s name an explicit endpoint of the same command pattern.
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