What Does Hosea 4:7 Mean in the King James?
As they were increased, so they sinned against me: therefore will I change their glory into shame.
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
Their increase multiplies their missing until what they call glory, weight, becomes shame, a kind of lightness.
THE MEANING
When increase goes with turning against God, the breach grows alongside it. What carries weight as glory can be changed into disgrace; growth does not shield it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that increase by itself proves favor or secures honor: growth can magnify the breach that ends in disgrace.
THE ROOT
כְּבוֹדָם
kevodam
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
Kavod carries the sense of weight: glory is what has substance and is treated as weighty. The verse’s reversal from glory to shame turns that weight into its opposite.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
The shared root lets “glory” carry the concrete sense of weight.
kibbed: To honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor is the act of giving someone weight; Hosea says that weight can be exchanged for disgrace.
קָלוֹן
qālôn
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
To be light, slight, or treated as insignificant.
The word for shame comes from a root associated with being light or made slight. Beside kavod, “weight,” it reveals the verse’s movement from substance to disgrace.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light, slight, or easy.
קַל
This branch makes the weight-to-lightness contrast in Hosea visible.
qillel: To curse or treat with contempt.
קִלֵּל
The root’s sense of being made slight reaches into contempt and disgrace.
חָטְאוּ
ḥāṭəʾû
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss or fail to reach.
“sinned” in this verse is ḥāṭəʾû. The verb names a missing, not merely a label for wrongdoing. The sentence links increase to that missing: as they grow, their turning against God grows with them.
ALSO GROWS
chet: A missing or fault.
חֵטְא
This noun keeps the root’s sense of missing visible in the verse’s accusation.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A fault or an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same root can name both the breach and what addresses it, showing how central this “missing” is to the language of wrongdoing.
THE PATTERN
Increase and honor bring no immunity: what is gained can magnify the breach and end in reproach.
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:THE THREAD
Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.In Hebrew, “honour” echoes kavod, weight, while “lightly esteemed” uses the root qll, light or made slight. Those roots expose the weight-to-light reversal inside Hosea’s exchange of glory for shame.
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