What Does Deuteronomy 2:11 Mean in the King James?
Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims.
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
“Giants” classifies them, while “Emims” names the terror they awaken.
THE MEANING
A formidable reality can be counted among the giants and still be known through the terror it evokes: “Emims” names the felt force behind the comparison with the Anakims. The verse lets the category and the experience stand side by side.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that one label tells the whole story falls away: “giants” classifies, while “Emims” reveals the fear carried in the name.
THE ROOT
אֵימִים
ʾēmîm
GROWS FROM
א־י־ם
To be terrifying; to inspire dread.
“Emims” in this verse is ʾēmîm. The Moabite name comes from the Hebrew word family for terror and dread. It names not simply how these people are classified, but the fear they evoke in those who name them.
ALSO GROWS
ʾēmāh: Terror, dread
אֵימָה
This singular noun gives the same felt quality that the plural name Emim carries.
ʾayōm: Terrible, fearsome
אֲיֹם
This adjective describes something as dreadful, making the name’s sense of terror visible in another form.
יֵחָשְׁבוּ
yeḥāšĕvû
GROWS FROM
ח־ש־ב
To think, reckon, or devise.
The word translated “accounted” belongs to a root that spans thought and reckoning. The verse places a considered category beside a name shaped by fear, showing two distinct ways of reading the same people.
ALSO GROWS
maḥăšāḇāh: Thought, plan
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This branch shows the root’s reach into what is formed in the mind.
ḥešbôn: Account, calculation
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch makes the counting sense of “accounted” concrete.
THE PATTERN
A name can make a hidden reading visible by condensing what is perceived or what someone embodies.
(That also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims;Let not my lord, I pray thee, regard this man of Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him: but I thine handmaid saw not the young men of my lord, whom thou didst send.And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,THE THREAD
(That also was accounted a land of giants: giants dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims;The same Hebrew word רְפָאִים (rephaim, rendered “giants”) appears here, and the verse repeats the movement from reckoning to a people’s name for them. The parallel makes clear how the category and the name preserve different ways of seeing.
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