What Does Hosea 13:13 Mean in the King James?
The sorrows of a travailing woman shall come upon him: he is an unwise son; for he should not stay long in the place of the breaking forth of children.
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 “sorrows” are cords that grip, and the place of birth is a breaking point where emergence can fail.
THE MEANING
The verse places you at a birth threshold where pain tightens around you, while the unwise son cannot remain at the opening where children emerge. It holds the danger plainly: the moment of breaking forth has arrived, but the capacity to pass through it is absent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that reaching the threshold of birth means emergence is assured; here, the one in labor lacks the capacity to remain there.
THE ROOT
חֶבְלֵי
chevlei
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
To bind; a cord or rope.
“Sorrows” can sound like an inward feeling, but חֶבְלֵי pictures cords that grip. The same word describes the cords or pangs of death in Psalm 18:4, so this birth pain carries the weight of peril as well as emergence.
ALSO GROWS
chebel: Cord or rope.
חֶבֶל
It makes the labor image tangible: pain is pictured as something that binds and tightens.
chevlei mavet: Cords or pangs of death.
חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת
Psalm 18:4 uses the same word for death’s grip, linking the danger of labor with mortal peril.
מִשְׁבָּר
mishbar
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, fracture, or shatter.
“breaking forth” in this verse is mishbar. The birth opening is named with a word from the root of breaking. English can make the place sound like a passive location; the Hebrew holds the force of a break through, where emergence and rupture meet.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb gives the birth threshold its force: something breaks open as life comes forth.
mishbar: A breaker or surge, and the birth threshold in this verse.
מִשְׁבָּר
The same word is used for the place of birth in Isaiah 37:3, where there is no strength to bring forth.
THE PATTERN
Birth imagery names the painful threshold where life is trying to emerge, and passage through that threshold is not assured.
And they said unto him, Thus saith Hezekiah, This day is a day of trouble, and of rebuke, and of blasphemy: for the children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.THE THREAD
The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.Hosea’s “sorrows of a travailing woman” and Psalm’s “sorrows of death” share חֶבְלֵי (chevlei), cords or pangs. The shared word lets birth and mortal danger speak in one image: the cords around emergence can also be the cords of death.
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