What Does Hosea 4:2 Mean in the King James?
By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.
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 hidden hinge is “break out”: the violations breach their bounds until one bloodshed reaches the next.
THE MEANING
The verse names a world where oath-breaking, deception, murder, theft, and adultery breach shared boundaries until bloodshed runs into bloodshed. Its image is cumulative: harm reaches harm, and separate violations become a shared condition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that each breach stays isolated or that violence arrives without a trail; here, violation spreads until blood reaches blood.
THE ROOT
פָּרָצוּ
pārāṣû
GROWS FROM
פרץ
To break through, make a breach, or spread beyond a boundary.
“break out” in this verse is pārāṣû. The verb names a breach that carries outward force, not a contained act. Here, the listed violations break through restraint, and the next image shows their violence reaching and accumulating upon itself.
ALSO GROWS
perets: A breach or breaking forth.
פֶּרֶץ
It makes the verse’s “break out” concrete: the listed acts open a breach in the shared order.
u-faratzta: “You shall spread abroad” (Genesis 28:14), from the same root.
וּפָרַצְתָּ
It shows the root’s sense of movement beyond bounds; in Hosea, the surrounding acts turn that outward spread into a destructive one.
נָגָעוּ
nāgāʿû
GROWS FROM
נגע
To touch, reach, or strike.
“toucheth” in this verse is nāgāʿû. The verb pictures bloodshed coming into contact with more bloodshed, rather than ending as a single event. Its root also forms words for contact and for a blow or affliction, joining nearness with harm.
ALSO GROWS
maga: Touch or contact.
מַגָּע
It illuminates the image of one blood reaching another: the violence is in contact, not separated into sealed incidents.
nega: A blow, lesion, or plague.
נֶגַע
This branch carries the root’s harmful edge: what touches can also strike and afflict.
THE PATTERN
When restraints of truth and life give way, harm spreads beyond its first breach and becomes shared violence.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.THE THREAD
And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.“Break out” in Hosea and “spread abroad” here come from the same root, פרץ (parats): movement that breaches limits and expands outward. The surrounding words in Hosea show that this force carries violence there, while Genesis gives an image of expansive reach joined to blessing.
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