What Does Hosea 5:3 Mean in the King James?
I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hid from me: for now, O Ephraim, thou committest whoredom, and Israel is defiled.
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
God’s “I know” is יָדַע (yādaʿ, know through encounter), placing Ephraim’s unfaithfulness in the full view of an intimate relationship.
THE MEANING
You are fully known now, including what you would keep hidden. This verse names unfaithfulness and defilement without disguising either one.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what no one else sees is therefore hidden from God is undone here; exposure is not limited to what other people can detect.
THE ROOT
יָדַעְתִּי
yadaʿti
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or experience through direct encounter, including intimate knowing.
יָדַע (yādaʿ) can mean knowing through direct encounter, including intimate knowing. With “I know Ephraim” beside Ephraim’s whoredom, the verse makes betrayal visible within a relationship that already knows the one who betrays.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know, recognize, or experience, including intimate knowing.
יָדַע
This is the root verb behind “I know”; it gives God’s knowledge the force of direct recognition.
daʿat: Knowledge or recognition.
דַּעַת
Hosea 6:6 uses this related noun for “the knowledge of God,” showing the same root’s relational dimension.
נִכְחַד
nikḥad
GROWS FROM
כחד
kāḥad
To hide or conceal; in a causative form, to make disappear or cut off.
The root כחד (kāḥad, hide or conceal) can also describe causing something to disappear. “Not hid” carries the sharper sense that unfaithfulness cannot be made to vanish by concealing it.
ALSO GROWS
kāḥad: To hide, conceal, or keep out of sight.
כָּחַד
This is the concealment named in the verse: Israel’s condition remains fully visible to God.
hikhḥid: To cause to disappear or cut off.
הִכְחִיד
This causative branch connects concealment with erasure; what is hidden is not thereby erased.
THE PATTERN
What is fully known cannot be hidden from God’s sight, including the condition a person would conceal.
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.THE THREAD
For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.“Knowledge” here is דַּעַת (daʿat, knowledge or recognition), from the same יָדַע (yādaʿ, know through encounter) root as “I know” in Hosea 5:3. The later verse places that knowing at the heart of a living relationship, which makes Ephraim’s unfaithfulness in 5:3 all the more exposed.
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