What Does Exodus 15:5 Mean in the King James?
The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.
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 sea does not merely hide them; it covers them and carries them down, until the depths become both covering and grave.
THE MEANING
The image is brutally physical: the depths cover them, and they descend like stone to the bottom. It speaks now to the force of being overwhelmed and carried out of sight by something deeper and stronger. Here, covering does not leave what it catches untouched; it encloses and draws downward.
THE ROOT
יָרְדוּ
yāredû
GROWS FROM
ירד
to go down; to descend
The verse uses ירד (y-r-d), “to descend,” for the movement rendered “sank.” The related יְרִידָה (yeridah, “descent”) and יַרְדֵּן (Yarden, “Jordan,” a name commonly linked to descending) show the root’s downward motion in both an action and a waterway.
ALSO GROWS
yeridah: descent; going down
יְרִידָה
This noun retains the same downward movement, which the verse carries all the way to the seabed.
Yarden: Jordan, a name commonly linked to “the descender”
יַרְדֵּן
The river name is commonly connected to ירד, bringing the root’s downward motion into the landscape of water.
יְכַסְיֻמוּ
yekhasyumu
GROWS FROM
כסה
to cover; to conceal or cover over
“covered” in this verse is yekhasyumu. יְכַסְיֻמוּ (yekhasyumu) comes from כסה (kasah), “to cover.” The same root appears in מִכְסֶה (mikhseh, “a covering”), joining the act of covering to the thing that encloses.
ALSO GROWS
kasah: to cover; to conceal
כָּסָה
This is the verb’s root form, showing the action beneath “covered.”
mikhseh: a covering
מִכְסֶה
The related noun names what the sea becomes in the verse: a covering over those it catches.
THE PATTERN
The deep makes overwhelming force visible as water that closes over a body and pulls it down.
For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.THE THREAD
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;The same Hebrew root ירד (y-r-d, “descend”) appears in יֹרְדֵי (yordei, “those who go down”): here bodies descend beneath the sea, while Psalm 107 describes sailors going down to sea in ships. One root holds the downward movement; the surrounding words make it a fatal sinking here and a voyage there.
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