What Does Matthew 14:11 Mean in the King James?
And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother.
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 execution does not end at the blade: the repeated carrying verb makes the severed head the vehicle through which violence passes from hand to hand.
THE MEANING
The execution does not stay at its site: the severed head enters the household, passed to the girl and carried to her mother. The violence remains physically present in what each receives and passes along.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence ends at death. Here the head keeps traveling, carrying the execution into the family.
THE ROOT
ἠνέχθη
ēnechthē
GROWS FROM
φερ- (with the irregular aorist stem ἐνεγκ-)
Carry, bear, bring.
“brought” in this verse is ēnechthē. The verse uses two forms of one verb: first the head is carried in, then the girl carries it onward. Between them, it is handed over. The repeated carrying makes the head’s journey a relay, so the execution reaches beyond the executioner.
ALSO GROWS
anapherō: Carry up, bear.
ἀναφέρω
This compound uses the same carrying root; in 1 Peter 2:24, the related form describes what is borne in a body.
metapherō: Carry across, transfer.
μεταφέρω
The word names movement from one place to another, echoing how the head’s passage carries the execution into the family.
ἐδόθη
edothē
GROWS FROM
δο-/δω- (do-/dō-)
Give, grant, hand over.
The passive ‘was given’ marks the transfer between the two carrying actions. This is the hinge in the sequence: the girl receives the head and then carries it onward.
ALSO GROWS
dosis: Giving, gift.
δόσις
This noun from the same word family names the act of giving itself, making the handoff central to the scene.
paradidōmi: Hand over, deliver.
παραδίδωμι
This compound uses the same give-root for handing something over, sharpening the sense of violence passed between people.
THE PATTERN
Violence extends beyond its first agent as bodies and instruments of death pass through other people’s hands.
For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night.And there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with stones, that he died.And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.THE THREAD
Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.Peter’s ἀνήνεγκεν (anēnenken, “bore”) comes from ἀναφέρω (anapherō, “carry up, bear”), sharing the root φέρω (pherō, “carry”) with Matthew’s two “brought” forms. The same carrying root links a head borne as the aftermath of execution with what is borne in a body.
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