What Does Haggai 2:3 Mean in the King James?
Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?
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 word translated “glory” means weight, so the question reveals how comparison with former weight makes what stands before you look like nothing.
THE MEANING
The question puts remembered weight beside the house as it appears now, and the present seems like nothing under that comparison. The verse locates this verdict “in your eyes”: it names what this view sees without making that view the whole measure. What stands before you is being read through the scale of what came before.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that what falls short of former glory has no weight at all; it locates “nothing” in the eye’s comparison.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
K-B-D
To be heavy, weighty; to carry weight.
Kavod is weight or substance. Here, the house’s former weight is measured against what is seen now, and comparison makes the present seem like nothing; the root lets “glory” also be heard as perceived substance.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the physical sense of kavod audible: glory carries weight.
kibbed: To honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
To honor is to recognize someone or something as having weight, tying glory to the regard it receives.
THE PATTERN
A present work that looks slight beside remembered glory is not thereby weightless.
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;THE THREAD
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.The same word translated “glory” here is kavod, the weight named in the question. This verse gives the comparison a fuller horizon: “as nothing” is how the present appears, not the last word about its weight.
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