What Does Hosea 7:3 Mean in the King James?
They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies.
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
When lies please those who rule, corruption has become part of power’s emotional life.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes a present pattern: wrongdoing delights the king, while lies please the princes. Authority can welcome corruption as a pleasure, allowing deception to shape the order everyone inhabits. The lie lives in what power accepts as well as in what a speaker says.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a leader’s approval makes an act good dissolves here: a ruler’s pleasure can reveal corruption.
THE ROOT
כַּחֲשֵׁיהֶם
kaḥăšêhem
GROWS FROM
כחש
To deny, dissemble, or deal falsely.
The word translated “lies” comes from a root that also means denying or feigning a posture. Its reach makes the court’s lie more than an isolated false sentence: it can be a practiced appearance that hides what is true.
ALSO GROWS
kiḥēš: Denied or dealt falsely.
כִּחֵשׁ
This verbal form shows the active distortion of truth beneath the noun translated “lies.”
yitkaḥăšū: They feign submission or dissemble.
יִתְכַּחֲשׁוּ
The same root can describe an outward performance that conceals what is true, sharpening the sense of lies as more than mistaken words.
יְשַׂמְּחוּ
yesammeḥū
GROWS FROM
שמח
To rejoice or be glad.
“make glad” in this verse is yesammeḥū. The verb says they cause the king to rejoice. The root also names gladness itself, revealing wrongdoing as an occasion for delight at court.
ALSO GROWS
sameaḥ: Glad or rejoicing.
שָׂמֵחַ
This describes the state of gladness that the verb in the verse causes.
simḥāh: Joy or gladness.
שִׂמְחָה
This noun shares the root and connects the rulers’ pleasure to the same word family as joy.
THE PATTERN
When authority welcomes falsehood, corruption spreads from a lie into the order that sustains it.
If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are wicked.Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.THE THREAD
Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel with deceit: but Judah yet ruleth with God, and is faithful with the saints.The word translated “lies” here comes from the same כחש (kachash) root as the word in Hosea 7:3. In this verse, deception surrounds a relationship; in Hosea 7:3, the same kind of denial and dissembling pleases rulers.
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