What Does Hosea 2:20 Mean in the King James?
I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.
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
Faithfulness is the steady ground of a bond whose fruit is knowing the LORD.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as someone held within a promised bond, where faithfulness has the texture of steadiness rather than a passing feeling. To know the LORD here is relational recognition growing within that bond, not simply possession of information about God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that knowing the LORD means only possessing correct information: here, knowing is the lived recognition of a relationship.
THE ROOT
בֶּאֱמוּנָה
be'emunah
GROWS FROM
אמן
To be firm, reliable, or steady.
English “faithfulness” can sound like an abstract virtue; אֱמוּנָה (emunah, steadiness or faithfulness) carries the sense of something firm enough to lean on. The promise makes this steadiness the ground of betrothal, and the next clause places knowing the LORD within that secure relation.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāmēn: Amen; an affirmation of what is firm or true.
אָמֵן
The same root links faithfulness with an affirmation that rests on what is dependable.
neʾĕmān: Reliable, trustworthy, faithful.
נֶאֱמָן
This branch brings the root’s firmness into a description of someone who can be trusted, illuminating the steadiness of the promised bond.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s covenantal commitment opens into relational knowing.
And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.THE THREAD
But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.The Hebrew word translated “steady” is אֱמוּנָה (emunah, steadiness or faithfulness), the same word at the heart of Hosea’s “faithfulness.” In Exodus it describes hands held firm; here that same steadiness describes the bond from which knowing the LORD grows.
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