What Does Joel 1:14 Mean in the King James?
Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD,
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
This is a crisis made communal: the entire land is called into a set-apart gathering and one shared cry to the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses a crisis broad enough to summon the elders and every inhabitant: the fast is set apart, the people gather at the LORD’s house, and their cry rises together. The whole community stands inside the appeal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that widespread distress belongs to each person alone: the verse summons every inhabitant into a shared appeal.
THE ROOT
עֲצָרָה
ʿatsarah
GROWS FROM
עצר
To restrain, hold back, or stop.
The noun for “solemn assembly” grows from a verb for holding back or stopping. The gathering is named as a pause in ordinary activity, matching the fast and the community’s shared cry.
ALSO GROWS
ʿatsar: To restrain, hold back, or stop.
עָצַר
Its sense of stopping illuminates the assembly as a break in the land’s ordinary activity.
maʿatsar: A restraint, detention, or prison.
מַעְצָר
This branch carries the root’s sense of being held in, giving the assembly’s name a note of deliberate restraint.
קַדְּשׁוּ
qaddĕshû
GROWS FROM
קדשׁ
To set apart as distinct or sacred.
“sanctify” in this verse is qaddĕshû. The same root names setting something apart and the sacred place itself. Here the fast is marked as distinct, while the people gather at the LORD’s house: the practice and the place share the language of being set apart.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: Set-apartness; what is sacred.
קֹדֶשׁ
It shows that the act of setting apart belongs to the same word-family as the state of being sacred.
miqdash: Sanctuary, a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
It echoes the verse’s setting at the LORD’s house through the root’s connection between sacredness and place.
קִרְאוּ
qirʾû
GROWS FROM
קרא
To call, summon, or proclaim.
This root also gives words for public reading and convocation, linking a spoken summons with a gathering. The verse’s call is meant to convene the whole land before its separate cry rises to the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
miqra: A convocation or public reading.
מִקְרָא
It joins the act of calling with the gathering the call brings together.
qeriʾah: A calling or reading aloud.
קְרִיאָה
It keeps the spoken quality of the summons visible: the assembly begins with a call heard by the people.
THE PATTERN
When distress reaches beyond one person, appeal to God takes communal form.
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly:So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.Peter therefore was kept in prison: but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.THE THREAD
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly:Joel 2:15 repeats the exact phrases “sanctify a fast” and “call a solemn assembly.” The shared Hebrew roots show the fast and the gathered pause as paired parts of a public summons.
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