What Does Micah 1:7 Mean in the King James?
And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot.
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 hire gathered from the harlot returns as harlot’s hire, while the images built around that exchange are smashed.
THE MEANING
The verse shows devotion’s crafted objects smashed, its accumulated hire burned, and its idols left desolate. Worship and sexual exchange are bound together: what is gathered as harlot’s hire returns as that same hire. The destruction reaches both the objects of devotion and the wealth attached to them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that worship can make its wealth pure, or that the objects built from it can protect it.
THE ROOT
אֶתְנַן
ʾetnan
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place.
The word for hire belongs to the give-and-hand-over family, so the payment remains marked by the exchange that produced it. The verse repeats that hire as both what is gathered and what returns, closing the exchange into a circle.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
The payment is something handed over; this root keeps the act of giving inside the word for hire.
mattanah: Gift, present.
מַתָּנָה
A gift and a hire are both things given; the exchange around them reveals what kind of transfer is taking place.
יָשׁוּבוּ
yāshūvū
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
sh-v-b
To turn back or return.
“return” in this verse is yāshūvū. The closing verb says the hire does not merely disappear; it turns back to the very exchange named at the start. The word makes the judgment cyclical, matching hire to hire.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: Turn back, return.
שׁוּב
The verse’s verb carries the sense of a turning back to the source.
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun from the same root keeps the idea of return visible beyond the verse’s verb form.
פְּסִילֶיהָ
pesileha
GROWS FROM
פסל
p-s-l
To hew, cut, or carve.
“graven images” in this verse is pesileha. The Hebrew preserves the making inside the name of the image: it is something carved into form, and now it is beaten apart. The verse holds the making and breaking together in one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
pasal: Hew, cut, carve.
פָּסַל
This verb names the shaping that produces the carved object.
pesel: Carved image, idol.
פֶּסֶל
This is the singular form for the carved image that the verse says will be smashed.
THE PATTERN
A gain retains the source of its exchange; what is gathered remains bound to what produced it and faces its consequences.
Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.“The hire of a whore” uses the same Hebrew phrase, אֶתְנַן זוֹנָה (ʾetnan zonah), as Micah’s “hire of an harlot.” Deuteronomy bars that payment from the LORD’s house; Micah shows the hire burned and returning to its source.
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