What Does Haggai 1:10 Mean in the King James?
Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit.
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 sky and soil are not failing separately: the same Hebrew verb says both are holding their gifts back.
THE MEANING
When dew is withheld above you and fruit below, the verse names one interruption reaching through the whole field of provision. What falls from the heavens and what grows from the earth are joined in that stoppage.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The apparent failures above and below are unrelated; the verse gives them one shared verb.
THE ROOT
כָּלְאוּ
kālʾû
GROWS FROM
כ־ל־א
k-l-ʾ
to restrain, shut up, or withhold
“stayed” in this verse is kālʾû. The verse repeats one verb: the heavens withhold the dew and the earth withholds its fruit. A related word for prison or cage, כֶּלֶא (keleʾ), shows the root’s sense of something held within a boundary, here, provision is held back rather than flowing.
ALSO GROWS
tikhlaʾ: withhold or hold back
תִּכְלָא
Psalm 40:11 uses this form in the plea, “Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me”; the same root can name compassion being held back as well as dew and fruit.
keleʾ: prison or cage
כֶּלֶא
This related noun makes the root’s image of restraint spatial: what is held back is enclosed, unable to move freely.
THE PATTERN
Dew or rain from heaven and fruit from the ground move as one provision system: when one is withheld or restored, the other responds.
And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.THE THREAD
Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.“Withhold” here comes from the same Hebrew root כלא (k-l-ʾ, restrain or hold back) as “stayed” in Haggai. Haggai applies that restraint to dew and fruit; this verse asks that compassion not be held back.
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