What Does Joel 3:8 Mean in the King James?
And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.
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 hard reversal reaches beyond the guilty sellers: their children become the next people sold.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with retaliation reaching into the next generation: the children of those who sold Judah’s children are themselves sold. They pass through Judah’s hands and then onward to a distant people, named as the cost of returned violence. The closing words place that judgment under the LORD’s spoken declaration.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the hope that retaliation stays confined to the guilty: here, the children bear the consequence of their parents’ violence.
THE ROOT
תִּמְכְּרוּ
timkeru
GROWS FROM
מכר
m-k-r
Sell; transfer for a price.
The root מכר (m-k-r, “sell”) occurs twice here: first for the transfer into Judah’s hand, then for the onward sale. The repeated seed makes the children pass through successive transactions, exposing how the violence treats them as objects of exchange.
ALSO GROWS
mimkar: A sale; something sold.
מִמְכָּר
This noun makes the transaction explicit: a person is caught inside the category of what can be sold.
vayyimkeru: And they sold.
וַיִּמְכְּרוּ
In Genesis 37:28, this form describes Joseph being sold; like the children here, a person is made the object passed along in a transaction.
רָחוֹק
raḥoq
GROWS FROM
רחק
r-ḥ-q
Be far away; put at a distance.
The word for “far off” shares its root with the verb for removing Judah’s children far from their border in Joel 3:6. Distance is part of the injury: the sale carries children away from their people and toward a remote destination.
ALSO GROWS
raḥaq: Be far; remain at a distance.
רָחַק
It shows distance as a condition of separation, not merely a description of the Sabeans’ location.
hirḥiq: Remove or put far away.
הִרְחִיק
Joel 3:6 uses this root for driving Judah’s children far from their border, linking the first removal to the distant destination named here.
דִּבֵּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
Speak, declare; the related noun can mean a word or matter.
The final clause places the chain of sales under something spoken by the LORD. The same root holds both דִּבֵּר (dibber, “he spoke”) and דָּבָר (davar, “word” or “matter”), joining the declaration to the matter it names.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word; matter or thing.
דָּבָר
The related noun lets “spoken” carry the sense of a declared word and the matter that word addresses.
dibber: He spoke; he declared.
דִּבֶּר
This verb is the form in the verse’s closing statement that the LORD has spoken.
THE PATTERN
Violence returns in a corresponding measure, carrying its harm back toward those who set it in motion.
The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border.For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
The children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians, that ye might remove them far from their border.Joel 3:6 uses the same root מכר (m-k-r, “sell”) and the root רחק (r-ḥ-q, “be far or put at a distance”) behind “far off” here. Their return makes the reversal precise: sale and distance come back upon the sellers’ children.
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