What Does Jonah 3:8 Mean in the King James?
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
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 turn is a return from a road worn by repeated steps, made visible when violence leaves the hands.
THE MEANING
People and animals are covered in sackcloth and cry mightily to God; each person turns from a harmful way and from violence in their hands. The verse holds the cry and the turn in one present movement: the appeal reaches toward God as practiced harm is left behind.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a forceful cry or visible grief by itself constitutes a turn. This verse joins the cry to leaving the harmful way and the violence held in the hands.
THE ROOT
וְיָשֻׁבוּ
weyashuvu
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
To turn back, return.
The root carries the sense of return: a turn from a course already being followed. Here its direction is explicit, away from the harmful way and violence in the hands.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun keeps the motion in the root visible: turning is a return, not merely a passing feeling.
meshubah: Backsliding, turning away.
מְשׁוּבָה
The same root can name a turning away from the right course; Jonah makes the needed direction clear by naming what the people leave behind.
מִדַּרְכּוֹ
mi-darko
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread, step, or travel along a course.
The word for “way” is connected to treading: a path is a course made by steps. Turning from the way means the repeated direction of conduct itself changes.
ALSO GROWS
darakh: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
The verb brings the path back to the act of walking it, giving “way” a lived, repeated quality.
derekh: Road, way, or course of conduct.
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the word in the verse: the path being left is also a pattern of conduct.
הֶחָמָס
heḥamas
GROWS FROM
חמס
To act wrongfully or violently; violence and oppression.
The verse locates the violence in the people’s palms. The root names wrongful force, and its placement makes the turn concrete: it reaches into what the hands do.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmās: Violence, wrong, oppression.
חָמָס
This noun names the harm they are turning away from.
ḥāmas: To act violently or do wrong.
חָמַס
The verb shows the same root as an enacted force, matching the verse’s image of violence in the hands.
THE PATTERN
A return to God takes shape as a departure from harmful conduct.
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judæa, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.THE THREAD
O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.Hosea’s call to “return” uses the same Hebrew root, שׁוּב, as Jonah’s “turn.” The shared root opens Jonah’s turn as a return toward God, with the harmful path named as what is being left.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us