What Does Joel 1:19 Mean in the King James?
O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field.
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 fire does not merely burn the land; it eats what sustains life, and that loss becomes the reason for the cry.
THE MEANING
The cry to the LORD rises from devastation that reaches the sources of life: pasture and trees are being consumed. The fire is not scenery; the verse lets the loss of the land’s provision enter prayer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that damage to the land is only background to spiritual life: the burned pasture and trees are precisely what gives the cry its urgency.
THE ROOT
אָכְלָה
ʾāḵəlâ
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
to eat, consume
“devoured” in this verse is ʾāḵəlâ. The Hebrew uses the ordinary verb for eating: fire becomes a consuming mouth. The pasture that feeds life becomes food for the fire, so the devastation reaches beyond scenery to the means of life.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: to eat, consume
אָכַל
This verb shows the force of the image: the fire acts as an eater.
ʾōḵel: food, sustenance
אֹכֶל
The same root names both consuming and what is consumed; the pasture is provision turned into fuel.
maʾăḵāl: food, edible provision
מַאֲכָל
This branch keeps the loss concrete: what the fire consumes is part of the provision that sustains life.
אֶקְרָא
ʾeqrāʾ
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
to call, summon, proclaim
This is a call directed to someone: “to thee” gives the cry an addressee. The devastation is not left as a mute fact; it becomes an appeal to the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
qārāʾ: to call, summon, proclaim
קָרָא
The cry belongs to the root’s sense of calling out to another.
miqrāʾ: reading, convocation
מִקְרָא
This branch carries the root into a public calling or gathering, showing that a call can give a shared event a voice.
THE PATTERN
When what sustains life is consumed or withheld, human and creaturely distress rises into appeal and groaning.
The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.The next verse repeats the same Hebrew root אכל (ʾ-k-l), “to eat, consume,” in the line about fire devouring the pastures. It also widens the cry to the beasts, so the same consumed landscape is heard through both human and creaturely voices.
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