What Does Ezekiel 38:13 Mean in the King James?
Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?
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 asks whether the invader has come “to plunder plunder,” making the gathering’s purpose impossible to miss.
THE MEANING
You hear the question put to a force arriving with others’ possessions in view: what have you gathered yourselves to carry away? Silver, gold, livestock, and goods make the appetite concrete, while the repeated plunder language exposes the purpose beneath the gathering. The verse speaks wherever organized power is measured by what it can seize.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a large, organized force has a noble purpose simply because it is united: the question names what it comes to seize.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁלֹל שָׁלָל
lishlol shalal
GROWS FROM
שלל
To strip away or plunder; as a noun, the goods seized as booty.
“take a spoil” in this verse is lishlol shalal. In the Hebrew phrase “to plunder plunder,” both the action and its object grow from שׁלל (shalal, plunder or booty). The closing “to plunder a great spoil” returns to the same seed, leaving seizure at the passage’s blunt center.
ALSO GROWS
lishlol: The act of seizing goods as plunder.
לִשְׁלֹל
It supplies the action in “to take a spoil,” echoing the noun that follows it.
shalal: Goods taken by plunder.
שָׁלָל
This noun appears with the verb and returns in “a great spoil,” keeping the plunder itself at the center of the question.
קְהָלֶךָ
qehālekha
GROWS FROM
קהל
To assemble or gather; an assembly gathered together.
The phrase rendered “gathered thy company” joins לִקְהַל (liqhal, to assemble) with קְהָלֶךָ (qehālekha, your assembly), forms from the same root. The group and the act of convening it are linguistically joined, and the question asks what this organized unity has gathered to take.
ALSO GROWS
liqhal: The act of gathering or assembling.
לִקְהַל
In this verse it pairs with “your assembly,” making the phrase echo “to gather your gathering.”
qehālekha: The gathered company or assembly.
קְהָלֶךָ
This names the group formed by the gathering action, from the same root.
THE PATTERN
Plunder announces a group’s aim in the goods it seeks, and the harm it leaves becomes a claim against it.
We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil:Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.THE THREAD
So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD.The same root שָׁלַל (shalal, plunder) shifts who acts and who is acted upon: the plunderers become the plundered. It answers Ezekiel 38:13’s “to plunder plunder” with a reversal in who carries off the spoil.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us