What Does Micah 6:16 Mean in the King James?
For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof an hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.
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 verse links what a people preserve with the path they walk: guarded counsel becomes collective ruin.
THE MEANING
Where you preserve a pattern and walk by its counsel, this verse names the consequence as desolation, public hissing, and a burden of reproach. It speaks to a people as a whole: what is kept and followed shapes the condition they inhabit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a practice becomes harmless because it is established, inherited, or kept as custom; the path still bears the character and consequence of its counsel.
THE ROOT
וַתֵּלְכוּ
vatēlekhū
GROWS FROM
הלך
to walk, go, or move along
The verse says you walk in their counsels: counsel is not merely an idea held in the mind but a route enacted step by step. The root’s ordinary movement language makes the choice visible as a lived direction.
ALSO GROWS
holekh: one who walks or goes
הוֹלֵךְ
The counsel becomes a direction someone actually follows.
halikhah: walking, going, or proceeding
הֲלִיכָה
The root presents the pattern as ongoing movement, not a single thought.
יִשְׁתַּמֵּר
yishtammer
GROWS FROM
שמר
to guard, watch, or keep
“kept” in this verse is yishtammer. The statutes are actively guarded and maintained. Set beside walking, this root shows a preserved pattern becoming embodied direction.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: a watcher or guard
שֹׁמֵר
Keeping the statutes carries the sense of watching over and maintaining them.
mishmeret: a watch, charge, or duty kept
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
The branch connects keeping with an ongoing responsibility that shapes practice.
שַׁמָּה
shammah
GROWS FROM
שמם
to be desolate or appalled; to lay waste
“desolation” in this verse is shammah. The result is spatial and public: a place laid waste and inhabitants who become an object of hissing. This root names visible devastation, not a softened or merely inward condition.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: waste or desolation
שְׁמָמָה
It names the ruined condition the verse says the place becomes.
meshōmēm: one who desolates or lays waste
מְשֹׁמֵם
This form connects the condition of desolation with the act of bringing it about.
THE PATTERN
The counsel a person follows becomes a path whose consequences return upon those who walk it.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.Psalm 1 uses the same walk-and-counsel structure to describe a path a person does not enter; Micah names a people who walk in the counsel they preserve. Read together, the contrast makes direction decisive: the counsel underfoot shapes the path, and Micah exposes its cost.
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