What Does Joel 3:5 Mean in the King James?
Because ye have taken my silver and my gold, and have carried into your temples my goodly pleasant things:
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 word for “pleasant things” shares its root with “covet”: what desire seizes and carries into a temple is still named as someone else’s precious thing.
THE MEANING
What is precious to God remains his even after someone claims it and gives it a sacred address. Desire can turn taking into a private act of reverence, but the temple does not transform possession into belonging.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Putting what I take inside a sacred space makes it rightfully mine.
THE ROOT
מַחְמַדַּי
maḥămadday
GROWS FROM
חמד
To desire, take pleasure in, or find desirable.
“pleasant things” in this verse is maḥămadday. The Hebrew calls these treasures “my desirable things,” using a noun from the same root as the verb “covet.” The language links the precious object to the desire that reaches for it: the goods carried into the temples remain the very things someone coveted and took.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmad: To desire, covet, or take pleasure in.
חָמַד
The verb makes the link plain: desire and the act of taking are joined to the name of what is precious.
ḥemdāh: A delight, precious thing, or desirable possession.
חֶמְדָּה
This related noun shows the root can name both the pull of desire and the valued thing it fixes on.
THE PATTERN
What desire takes and sacred space houses remains exposed as theft.
When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.THE THREAD
When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.Joshua’s “coveted” and Joel’s “pleasant things” grow from the same root, חמד (ḥāmad), desire. Joshua names the desire that reaches for silver and gold; Joel names those seized treasures as still belonging to another.
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