What Does Micah 5:11 Mean in the King James?
And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all thy strong holds:
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 כרת (karat, cut) removes cities here and also appears in the phrase “cut a covenant,” holding severance and binding in one root.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks with uncompromising force about what the reader calls secure: public centers and fortified defenses both remain within God’s reach. It names cities and strongholds together, from shared life to its final barrier. Here divine action is removal, not preservation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that walls, cities, or accumulated defenses can make a people untouchable.
THE ROOT
וְהִכְרַתִּי
wehikhratti
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
Cut, sever, cut off.
“cut off” in this verse is wehikhratti. The same root appears in כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit), the idiom “to cut a covenant.” The verse’s cutting is decisive: this root can name both severing and the act that binds a covenant.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut or sever.
כָּרַת
This is the root verb behind “I will cut off,” making the removal in the verse direct and concrete.
karat berit: To cut a covenant; to enter a binding covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same root that removes the cities also names covenant-making, revealing how one Hebrew verb carries both severance and binding.
hikkaret: To be cut off or eliminated.
הִכָּרֵת
This related form makes explicit the state the verse declares for the cities: cut away from what remains.
מִבְצָרֶיךָ
mibtsareikha
GROWS FROM
בצר
batsar
Fortify, make inaccessible or secure.
“strong holds” in this verse is mibtsareikha. The word for strongholds grows from a root associated with fortifying and placing beyond access. The verse names the human attempt to make a domain unreachable, and declares those defenses brought down.
ALSO GROWS
mivtsar: A fortress or fortified place.
מִבְצָר
This is the noun form behind the verse’s strongholds, naming the defenses as places built for security.
batsur: Fortified, inaccessible, secure.
בָּצוּר
This form exposes the quality the stronghold claims: being beyond reach, the very claim the verse overturns.
THE PATTERN
Human fortifications cannot put a city or its people beyond God’s reach.
And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword.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.And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.THE THREAD
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:Genesis uses the same Hebrew root כרת (karat, cut) in the phrase translated “made a covenant.” The shared verb shows that this root can sever and bind: here it cuts away the land’s defenses; there it names the making of a covenant.
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