What Does Micah 1:5 Mean in the King James?
For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?
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
Micah makes rebellion visible by naming the capitals where it takes civic form: Samaria for Jacob and Jerusalem for Judah.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you about a rupture that is not hidden in private intention: it is embodied in Samaria, while Judah’s high places are named as Jerusalem. Its two words hold both breaking away and missing, locating the fracture in the centers of communal life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a city’s religious or national importance places it beyond accountability dissolves here: Jerusalem itself is named among Judah’s high places.
THE ROOT
פֶּשַׁע
peshaʿ
GROWS FROM
פ־ש־ע
p-sh-ʿ
Rebellion; breaking away.
“transgression” in this verse is peshaʿ. פֶּשַׁע names rebellion or a breaking away. The related verb means “to rebel,” so Micah’s charge is a rupture that can be seen in the centers of public life named in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
pāshaʿ: To rebel, break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verb makes the noun’s rebellion an active rupture, which Micah locates in the life of the people.
pōsheʿîm: Rebels; those who break away.
פֹּשְׁעִים
This form names people by the same root, showing how the rupture described here can characterize a whole community.
חַטֹּאות
ḥaṭṭāʾôt
GROWS FROM
ח־ט־א
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss, err, or fail.
The word for “sins” grows from a root meaning to miss or err, while the verse also names rebellion with פֶּשַׁע. Together they give the community’s condition two textures: missing and breaking away.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or do wrong.
חָטָא
The verb shows the root as an action, giving “sins” the sense of repeated misses or errors.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Sin; wrongdoing, and in some contexts a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
This related noun carries the same root into the language of sin, linking the verse’s plural charge to the root idea of missing.
THE PATTERN
A community’s rupture becomes visible in the public centers that embody its life.
How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.THE THREAD
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.Isaiah uses the same פ־ש־ע root in the verb translated “rebelled.” Micah names that rebellion in Samaria and Jerusalem, linking the act of breaking away with the public centers where a people’s life takes shape.
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