What Does Hosea 2:3 Mean in the King James?
Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.
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 threat is not merely to uncover her but to reverse life back to its exposed beginning and make deprivation fatal.
THE MEANING
The threat holds a life before you in which covering is removed, the scene is reset to the day of birth, and the land gives no water. Thirst is not a passing discomfort here; it is named as the means of death.
THE ROOT
אֲפְשִׂיטֶנָּה
’aphshitennah
GROWS FROM
פ־ש־ט
Spread out; strip off.
“strip” in this verse is ’aphshitennah. The verb carries both stripping away and spreading out. Here, exposure is followed by the image of a land laid bare, so the threat moves from removing her covering to leaving her without shelter or provision.
ALSO GROWS
pashat: Strip off; spread out.
פָּשַׁט
The verb holds removal and exposure together in the threat.
pashat ʿal: Spread against; make a raid.
פָּשַׁט עַל
The same root can describe a force spreading over a place, echoing the verse’s progression from stripping to desolation.
הוּלַדְתָּהּ
holadtah
GROWS FROM
י־ל־ד
Bear; bring forth.
“born” in this verse is holadtah. The comparison reaches back to the day of her birth: the threatened stripping returns her image to life’s exposed beginning. The root links the newborn child with the act of bringing forth, giving the threat the shape of a forced unmaking.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The verse names the beginning of life as the point to which she is returned.
holid: Beget; bring forth.
הוֹלִיד
The root of birth frames the threat as a reversal of what has been brought forth.
בַּצָּמָא
ba-tsama
GROWS FROM
צ־מ־א
Thirst; be thirsty.
Thirst is named as the instrument of death, so the dry land is not mere scenery. The same root can name a bodily lack or a deep longing, holding physical need and inward desire in one image.
ALSO GROWS
tsame: Thirsty.
צָמֵא
The adjective describes the exposed condition created by the dry land.
tsama: Thirst.
צָמָא
The noun names the means by which the verse says she is killed.
THE PATTERN
When sustaining provision is withdrawn, thirst exposes dependence as a matter of life and death.
Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.THE THREAD
My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?Hosea’s “thirst” and Psalm 42’s “thirsteth” share the Hebrew root צמא (tsama), thirst. In Hosea, thirst is imposed as a means of death; in the psalm, it names the soul’s longing for the living God, holding bodily need and inward desire in one word.
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