What Does Micah 3:10 Mean in the King James?
They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity.
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
A place named for wholeness can be built from the very things that tear wholeness apart.
THE MEANING
This verse names a living contradiction: Jerusalem carries the name of wholeness, yet bloodshed and injustice are part of what builds it. The violence is inside the structure, not an accident around it; the city’s sacred status does not remove that cost.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that calling a place sacred, or aiming at a good future, makes bloodshed and injustice acceptable foundations.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
ש־ל־ם
sh-l-m
Wholeness, completeness; being whole.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries shalom, wholeness, with the dual ending. The verse sets that name against injustice: the city’s name evokes wholeness while its foundations are made crooked.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, completeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in Jerusalem’s name, set in sharp tension with the injustice named here.
shalem: Whole, intact, complete.
שָׁלֵם
It makes the contrast concrete: the city’s evoked wholeness is undermined by the way it is built.
בֹּנֶה
boneh
GROWS FROM
בנה
b-n-h
To build, establish, or form.
“build up” in this verse is boneh. The verse makes blood a means of building, so violence is part of the construction itself, not damage that happens afterward. The word family also links building with a structure and, traditionally, with a son who continues a household, what is built can become an inheritance.
ALSO GROWS
mivneh: A structure or building.
מִבְנֶה
The branch makes visible how the verb’s action becomes a lasting form.
ben: A son.
בֵּן
Traditionally linked with banah, building a household; what is built may be carried forward as an inheritance.
עַוְלָה
ʿawlāh
GROWS FROM
עול
ʿ-w-l
To act unjustly or deal crookedly.
“iniquity” in this verse is ʿawlāh. The Hebrew names injustice, not merely a private flaw. Paired with the verb “build,” crooked dealing becomes part of the city’s structure.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāwal: To act unjustly or deal wrongly.
עָוַל
The verb form shows injustice as an action that constructs the conditions named in the verse.
ʿāwel: Wrongdoing or injustice.
עָוֶל
This noun shares the root’s sense of crooked dealing and clarifies what is built into the city.
THE PATTERN
What is built through injustice carries that injustice inside its structure.
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!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
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.Psalm 127 uses the same root, בנה (banah, build), and places building beside keeping. Micah shows a city rising through blood and injustice; the shared root shifts attention from the city’s name to what its construction can actually secure.
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