What Does Habakkuk 3:17 Mean in the King James?
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls:
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 olive’s “failure” comes from a root that also means to deny or deceive: what should yield nourishment gives no answer.
THE MEANING
The reader meets the possibility of every visible source of provision failing at once: harvest, pasture, flock, and herd. The verse leaves that loss unsoftened, naming the whole material landscape as empty.
THE ROOT
כִּחֵשׁ
kiḥēš
GROWS FROM
כחש
To be false, deny, or deceive; here, to fail or disappoint.
“fail” in this verse is kiḥēš. English says the olive’s labor fails; the Hebrew verb belongs to a root whose range also includes denying and deceiving. The image carries the disappointment of expected nourishment not arriving, as if the yield denies what its work seemed to promise.
ALSO GROWS
vattekhachesh: “She denied” (Genesis 18:15), a form of the same root.
וַתְּכַחֵשׁ
The root can describe a denial, giving the olive’s failure an added shade of expectation withheld.
vekhachesh: “Deceiving” or “lying” (Hosea 4:2), from the same root.
וְכַחֵשׁ
This branch reveals the root’s language of something proving false, deepening the verse’s image of provision that does not come through.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes deprivation concrete by naming the food, land, and living things through which life is sustained.
The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth.And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.THE THREAD
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.Verse 17 strips every material provision from view; verse 18 begins with “Yet” and names joy in the LORD. The next line does not erase the loss, it shows where joy remains when visible sources are gone.
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