What Does Haggai 2:16 Mean in the King James?
Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.
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 shortfall repeats at two stages: the heap yields half its expected measure, and the press gives less than half.
THE MEANING
You come expecting twenty measures from the heap and find ten; you come to the press expecting fifty vessels and draw only twenty. The shortage appears both in what is gathered and in what can be drawn out. The verse keeps the gap between expected and actual yield in plain view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that a gathered heap or ready press guarantees the yield you expect.
THE ROOT
לַחְשֹׂף
laḥśōp̄
GROWS FROM
חשף
ḥ-ś-p̄
Uncover, strip bare, lay open.
“Draw out” sounds like a neutral transfer in English, but the root also means to uncover or strip bare. Drawing from the press exposes what it actually yields, after the heap has already fallen short.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāśap̄: Uncover; strip bare.
חָשַׂף
This verbal form carries the root sense beneath “draw out”: extraction exposes what was held within.
ḥăśūp̄ê: Uncovered; laid bare.
חֲשׂוּפֵי
Isaiah 20:4 uses this form for captives’ exposed bodies, showing the root’s concrete force of stripping away covering.
THE PATTERN
Expected yield can shrink at the point of harvest or extraction, leaving the gap between expectation and result exposed.
Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it.Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.THE THREAD
So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.Here the same root names captives’ bodies laid bare, a stripping with no softened edge. Under Haggai’s “draw out,” it makes the press’s yield an uncovering: what comes out exposes exactly how little is there.
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