What Does Micah 2:4 Mean in the King James?
In that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, and say, We be utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of my people: how hath he removed it from me! turning away he hath divided our fields.
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 Hebrew calls both the people’s “portion” and the dividing of their fields by the root חל״ק (ḥ-l-q): the seizure is a reallocation of another’s share.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks wherever another person’s inheritance is treated as available to carve up: the very act of dividing can become the divider’s own dispossession. What seemed like secure control becomes a public lament when a portion is removed and fields are split.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that control over someone else’s land secures your own portion; the dividing hand can find its own share removed.
THE ROOT
חֵלֶק
cheleq
GROWS FROM
חלק
ḥ-l-q
To divide, apportion, or allot a share.
“portion / divided” in this verse is cheleq. Portion, חֵלֶק (cheleq), and divided, יְחַלֵּק (yechalleq), come from the same root. Hebrew links the people’s allotted share to the division of their fields: the seizure is a reallocation of what belongs to others.
ALSO GROWS
cheleq: A portion or share.
חֵלֶק
This is the word translated “portion,” the share of the people that is changed and removed.
yechalleq: He divides or apportions.
יְחַלֵּק
This is translated “divided” near the end of the verse, joining the loss of a portion to the breaking up of fields.
chelqah: A plot or parcel of land.
חֶלְקָה
This branch makes the language of shares concrete: a portion can be an actual tract of land.
שָׁדוֹד נְשַׁדֻּנוּ
shadod neshadunu
GROWS FROM
שדד
sh-d-d
To plunder, ravage, or devastate.
The Hebrew repeats the root in adjacent forms, “plundered, we are plundered,” and the KJV preserves the echo with “spoiled” twice. The lament makes plunder ring as both the harm and the condition now spoken aloud.
ALSO GROWS
shadod: Plundered or devastated.
שָׁדוֹד
This form opens the lament: “utterly spoiled.”
shod: Plunder or devastation.
שֹׁד
This noun names the violence behind the repeated “spoiled,” linking the lament to the act that causes the loss.
THE PATTERN
A share seized from another becomes a public cry, and the hand that divides is exposed to dispossession itself.
Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.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
Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee.Isaiah uses שדד (shadad, to plunder) to say that the spoiler will be spoiled. Micah repeats the same root in “utterly spoiled,” making the loss in its lament echo the reversal Isaiah states plainly.
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