What Does Exodus 9:18 Mean in the King James?
Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.
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 hail is named as weight, and it falls in Egypt, whose Hebrew name carries the image of the narrows.
THE MEANING
You stand before a warning whose scale exceeds anything you have known: an overwhelming force is named before it arrives. The verse keeps the violence concrete, describing the coming hail as weight falling into a constricted place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A past without precedent does not guarantee a future within familiar limits.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy, weighty, or burdensome.
The word translated “grievous” names heaviness: the hail is not only severe but weighty. This same root reaches from physical weight to the weight a person or thing is accorded.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
The root’s sense of weight gives the hail’s severity a physical density, while also naming the weight accorded as honor.
kibbed: To honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
This verb carries heaviness into the act of assigning weight or importance, revealing the shared scale beneath “grievous” and “honor.”
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
ts-r-r
To bind, confine, or press into narrowness; the place-name carries the image of the narrows.
מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, “Egypt; the narrows”) holds constriction in the place-name. The verse sets unprecedented weight inside that narrowness, joining the setting and the force through images of pressure.
ALSO GROWS
tzar: Narrow, tight, constricted.
צַר
This branch gives the underlying image of narrowness carried by the place-name.
metzar: A narrow place or strait; distress.
מֵצַר
This branch makes the setting’s constriction vivid: the hail falls into the narrows.
THE PATTERN
Hail from heaven is portrayed as a force whose destructive scale exceeds human control.
So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;The word translated “grievous” here and “very grievous” there comes from כבד (k-b-d, “to be heavy”). The shared root lets the verse’s violent hail and Sodom’s moral burden speak through the same language of weight.
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