What Does Esther 4:13 Mean in the King James?
Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house, more than all the Jews.
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 refuge Esther imagines depends on imagining herself unlike the people whose danger she shares.
THE MEANING
You can stand near power and still share the exposure of the people marked for harm. The verse speaks where personal exemption seems plausible: being inside a protected house does not make you unlike those outside it. Esther’s belonging cannot be thought away.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that your position protects you from danger shared by your people.
THE ROOT
תְּדַמִּי
tedammî
GROWS FROM
דמה
To be like or compare; by extension, to imagine or reckon.
“Think” in this verse is tedammî. The Hebrew verb forbids Esther to imagine or compare herself as an exception. Its root also carries the sense of likeness, exposing the assumed difference between her position in the king’s house and the Jews under threat.
ALSO GROWS
dāmâ: To be like, resemble, or compare.
דָּמָה
This form carries the root’s likeness sense: the imagined escape depends on treating Esther as unlike her people.
dimmāh: To liken, compare, or imagine.
דִּמָּה
This related verb makes the connection explicit: Esther is warned against forming an imagined picture of herself as exempt.
THE PATTERN
A private refuge cannot erase a person’s belonging to a people under threat or suffering.
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.THE THREAD
I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.The Hebrew behind “used similitudes” comes from דמה, the same root as “think” in Esther’s warning. In Esther, the root names an imagined likeness that would make her seem exempt; Hosea shows that likeness-making is carried by this same word family.
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