What Does Exodus 5:9 Mean in the King James?
Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.
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 work becomes heavier precisely so a word of release can be made to sound empty.
THE MEANING
When release is named in your hearing, pressure can increase and call that promise empty. The added labor is meant to occupy attention and make the freeing word seem false.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse exposes is that increased pressure proves a word of freedom false; here, pressure is deliberately used to make it seem false.
THE ROOT
עֲבֹדָה
avodah
GROWS FROM
עבד
The root עבד (ʿ-b-d; avad) carries the sense of working or serving.
English separates “work” from “service,” but עֲבֹדָה (avodah, work/service) shares its root with עָבַד (avad, serve) and עֶבֶד (eved, servant or slave). The work imposed here is also service under another’s power; the root keeps labor and bondage joined.
ALSO GROWS
avad: to work or serve
עָבַד
The labor in the verse belongs to the same root as service.
eved: servant or slave
עֶבֶד
This branch reveals how imposed work can make a person serve another’s power.
תִּכְבַּד
tikbad
GROWS FROM
כבד
The root כבד (k-b-d; kabad) means to be heavy or weighty.
“heavy” in this verse is tikbad. The command does more than add tasks: it makes the labor weighty. The same root gives כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight or honor), and here that weight is laid on people to crowd out attention to the words being spoken.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: heavy
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the imposed burden in the verse concrete.
kavod: weight, honor, or glory
כָּבוֹד
The shared root shows that weightiness remains present beneath the verse’s image of labor made heavy.
THE PATTERN
Coercive power presses people under weight, using imposed labor to make words of release seem untrustworthy.
Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.THE THREAD
I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.The Hebrew עֲבָדִים (avadim, slaves or servants) in “house of bondage” shares the root עבד (ʿ-b-d; avad) with עֲבֹדָה (avodah, work/service) in this verse. The root links the imposed work to the condition of bondage itself.
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