What Does Judges 5:5 Mean in the King James?

The mountains melted from before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel.

Judges 5:5 · KJV

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

Even Sinai is described with a word for flowing streams: before the LORD, solidity becomes motion.

THE MEANING

The LORD’s presence is so immediate that even mountains are pictured as flowing before him. Sinai stands inside that image too, making the verse speak to what feels immovable now.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that something cannot yield because it feels immovable is undone here: even a mountain flows before the LORD.

THE ROOT

נָזְלוּ

nāzəlû

GROWS FROM

נזל

To flow, stream down, or distill.

The verb translated “melted” carries the motion of flowing down. The same root describes streams from Lebanon and instruction dropping like dew, so Sinai’s solidity becomes moving water before the LORD.

ALSO GROWS

nozlim: Flowing waters.

נֹזְלִים

In Song of Solomon, the same root names streams from Lebanon; here it pictures mountains flowing before the LORD.

tizzal: To drop or distill, as dew.

תִּזַּל

Deuteronomy uses this root for instruction descending like dew, showing the same flow in a gentle, nourishing form.

THE PATTERN

The LORD’s presence unsettles what looks immovable, and even mountains become moving ground.

The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.

Psalm 97:5 · KJVThe hills, like the mountains here, lose their solidity in the presence of the LORD.

And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.

Micah 1:4 · KJVThe mountains become molten and the valleys split as the LORD moves among them.

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

Hebrews 12:26 · KJVThe LORD’s voice shakes even the earth, carrying this pattern from mountains to heaven and earth.

THE THREAD

A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

Song of Solomon 4:15 · KJV

“Streams” comes from the same Hebrew root ⁨נזל⁩ (nazal, “to flow”) as “melted” in Judges. The root links Sinai’s flowing mountains with the living waters from Lebanon: both images show what is fixed becoming flow.

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