What Does Hebrews 11:32 Mean in the King James?
And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:
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 witness is so abundant that the Greek pictures time itself leaving before the telling is finished.
THE MEANING
Your life stands inside a witness too abundant for any single account to complete. The names here do not close the roster: the telling runs ahead of its available time, and the prophets widen the list beyond the six named figures.
THE ROOT
ἐπιλείψει
epileipsei
GROWS FROM
λείπω
To leave, be left, or be lacking; in this compound, to run short or cease.
The verb translated “fail” carries the sense of leaving off or running short: time is what leaves before the telling is done. The list measures not a scarcity of witnesses but an abundance of lives the verse cannot finish recounting.
ALSO GROWS
kataleípō: Leave behind; leave.
καταλείπω
This related compound keeps the same λειπ root and makes visible the sense of something left behind as time runs out.
apoleípō: Leave; leave behind.
ἀπολείπω
The same root appears in another compound for leaving something behind, echoing the verse’s picture of time departing before the account is complete.
דָּוִד
Dāwīd
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; the word family also carries the sense of an uncle or intimate relation.
The name דוד (dōd, beloved) carries more than a label: its family holds belovedness and intimate love. David’s place in this roll call is voiced as beloved among the witnesses.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: Beloved, lover, or uncle.
דּוֹד
This word shares the name’s consonants and holds both belovedness and kinship in the same family.
dōdîm: Loves or caresses.
דּוֹדִים
The plural form extends the same root into expressions of love, letting the name David resonate with intimacy as well as identity.
THE PATTERN
The living witness always exceeds what can be counted or fully told.
Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;THE THREAD
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,The next line turns the names into a surrounding cloud of witnesses and includes its reader in “we also.” What Hebrews 11:32 cannot finish naming becomes the living company around the present reader.
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