What Does Hosea 10:4 Mean in the King James?
They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.
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 covenant is literally cut, and false speech makes poison blossom in the furrows.
THE MEANING
False words spoken as oaths still cut bonds in shared life. Their consequence blossoms like poison in the furrows, so judgment grows within the order those words shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that a false oath is only speech and leaves no lasting mark: it cuts into shared life, and its consequence takes root.
THE ROOT
כָּרֹת
karot
GROWS FROM
כרת
to cut; to cut off
The word rendered “making” comes from כרת (karat, “to cut”): the Hebrew expression is to cut a covenant. That cutting image carries into the furrows, where the covenant’s poison takes root in the shared field.
ALSO GROWS
karat: to cut; to cut off
כָּרַת
This verb supplies the force beneath “making a covenant”: the bond is cut into being.
keritut: divorce; a certificate of divorce
כְּרִיתוּת
The same root can name a formal severing, keeping rupture within the vocabulary of the bond.
וּפָרַח
ufarach
GROWS FROM
פרח
to sprout; to blossom
The verb translated “springeth up” belongs to the language of flowering. Judgment is not pictured as an abstract ruling dropped onto the field; it blossoms there like a poisonous plant.
ALSO GROWS
parach: to sprout; to blossom
פָּרַח
This verb describes judgment emerging from the furrows as something that grows.
perach: blossom; flower
פֶּרַח
The related noun makes the verse’s image vivid: judgment flowers, though its fruit is poisonous.
THE PATTERN
What is planted through speech and action grows into the fruit the shared field must bear.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.THE THREAD
And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me, when they cut the calf in twain, and passed between the parts thereof,Hosea uses כרת (karat, “to cut”) in the phrase rendered “making a covenant”; Jeremiah 34:18 uses the same root for cutting the calf and for making the covenant. The echo exposes how covenant words cut into shared life, where their consequences take root.
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