What Does Hosea 11:6 Mean in the King James?
And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.
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 counsel they create becomes the path by which the sword reaches their cities.
THE MEANING
The sword stays over the cities, consuming their supports and devouring them. Their own counsel becomes the route through which destruction reaches them; what they set in motion shapes what overtakes them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that counsel stays separate from its consequences: here, what they devise becomes part of what brings the cities down.
THE ROOT
מִמּוֹעֲצוֹתֵיהֶם
mimmoʿatsoteihem
GROWS FROM
יעץ
To advise, counsel, or plan.
The Hebrew names their own counsels as the cause tied to the sword’s arrival. The same root can name both the counsel and the counselor, linking the plan to the one who forms it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿetsah: Counsel, advice, or a plan.
עֵצָה
This noun makes clear that the verse points to plans they themselves form.
yoʿets: Counselor or adviser.
יוֹעֵץ
The counselor and the counsel share a root, keeping the source of the plan close to its consequences.
וְכִלְּתָה
wekillethah
GROWS FROM
כלה
To finish, complete, or bring to an end.
“consume” in this verse is wekillethah. The sword does not merely threaten the city; it brings its supports toward an end. The root’s sense of finishing gives the destruction a force of completion.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: To come to an end or be finished.
כָּלָה
The verb’s sense of ending sharpens the force of the sword consuming what holds the city together.
kalil: Complete, entire, or wholly.
כָּלִיל
This related form echoes the total reach suggested by the sword’s consuming action.
THE PATTERN
What people set in motion through their own counsel returns as the force that fills or consumes them.
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.“Devices” translates the same Hebrew word for “counsels,” from the root יָעַץ (yaʿats), counsel or plan. Hosea shows the sword consuming the cities because of those counsels; Proverbs pictures the counsels themselves becoming what fills their makers.
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