What Does Nahum 2:2 Mean in the King James?
For the LORD hath turned away the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel: for the emptiers have emptied them out, and marred their vine branches.
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 repeats one root for “emptiers” and “emptied,” making the stripping itself the verse’s driving force.
THE MEANING
The verse places the LORD’s turning of Jacob’s excellency beside the plunderers’ emptying of the people and damage to their vine shoots. The repeated Hebrew root makes the emptying feel total; the vine image shows harm reaching the growth that carries what comes next.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief is that devastation is the whole story: the opening clause also turns toward Jacob’s restored splendor.
THE ROOT
בֹּקְקִים
boqeqim
GROWS FROM
בקק
To empty, pour out, or make void.
“emptiers” in this verse is boqeqim. The verse uses this root first for the ones doing the emptying, then again for what they do: בֹּקְקִים בְּקָקוּם. In Nahum 2:10, the same root returns in words rendered “empty, and void, and waste,” extending the image from an act of stripping to a state of desolation.
ALSO GROWS
beqaqûm: They emptied them.
בְּקָקוּם
This verbal form shares the root בקק with “emptiers,” turning the agents into an action that empties the people.
məvûqāh: Desolation, emptiness.
מְבוּקָה
This related form appears in Nahum’s description of emptiness and shows the same root naming the resulting condition.
שָׁב
shav
GROWS FROM
שוב
To turn back or return.
The Hebrew verb carries the motion of turning or returning. Beside the plunderers’ emptying, it gives the opening clause a movement back toward Jacob’s excellency, a nuance the phrase “turned away” can leave hidden.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: To return or turn back.
שׁוּב
This is the root verb whose movement of return is present in the verse’s שָׁב.
teshuvah: Return, turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun shares the root’s consonants and makes its turning-back motion visible as a state or act of return.
זְמֹרֵיהֶם
zemorehem
GROWS FROM
זמר
To prune or cut.
“vine branches” in this verse is zemorehem. The Hebrew word for the vine’s shoots belongs to the זמר family associated with pruning and cutting. The damage reaches the growth-bearing branches themselves, the parts through which the vine extends and bears fruit.
ALSO GROWS
zemorah: Vine shoot or branch.
זְמֹרָה
This related noun names the kind of growth damaged in the verse.
mazmerah: Pruning knife.
מַזְמֵרָה
This word shares זמר and reveals the cutting image that sits beneath the English “vine branches.”
THE PATTERN
A vine’s branches show the condition of the whole: they can be exposed to plucking, trampled, or pruned toward fruitfulness.
Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.THE THREAD
She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness.Nahum 2:10 repeats the same בקק root in words rendered “empty, and void, and waste.” The echo carries the stripping named here into a description of total desolation.
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