What Does Exodus 17:13 Mean in the King James?
And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.
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 Hebrew names Amalek’s defeat as a weakening, while the “mouth of the sword” makes that violence bodily and direct.
THE MEANING
Amalek’s strength fails in the encounter: Joshua weakens Amalek and his people by the sword. The verse keeps the defeat physical and direct; the sword’s “mouth” gives the blade a body in the sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that an aggressor’s power cannot be brought low is undone here: Amalek is the force made weak.
THE ROOT
וַיַּחֲלֹשׁ
wayyaḥălōš
GROWS FROM
חלש
To be weak; to weaken or prostrate.
“discomfited” in this verse is wayyaḥălōš. The verb wayyaḥălōš means “he weakened”: the sentence names Amalek’s loss of strength. The family also includes חָלָשׁ (ḥālāš, “weak, feeble”) and חֻלְשָׁה (ḥulšāh, “weakness”), joining the action to the condition it produces. The phrase לְפִי־חָרֶב (lefi ḥerev, “by the mouth of the sword”) gives the blade a mouth, making the violence concrete.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāš: Weak, feeble.
חָלָשׁ
The root’s adjective names the condition Joshua brings about in Amalek’s force.
ḥulšāh: Weakness, debility.
חֻלְשָׁה
This noun names the diminished strength carried in the verse’s verb.
THE PATTERN
In a crisis, strength is distributed: action holds when distinct people carry distinct parts of the struggle.
But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.THE THREAD
How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.Deuteronomy names Amalek as the force that strikes the faint and weary; Exodus names Amalek as the force made weak. The reversal turns the exposure around without softening the violence in either verse.
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