What Does Nahum 2:9 Mean in the King James?
Take ye the spoil of silver, take the spoil of gold: for there is none end of the store and glory out of all the pleasant furniture.
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 repeated command to plunder exposes wealth as something violence can strip, however endless its abundance.
THE MEANING
The verse brings you face to face with wealth under violent power: the store can be endless and still be exposed to seizure. Its repeated command makes the prized objects indistinguishable from loot once their holder is overpowered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough wealth makes its holder untouchable: even abundance without end is exposed to seizure.
THE ROOT
בֹּזּוּ
bozzu
GROWS FROM
בזז
bazaz
To plunder, seize as spoil.
“spoil” in this verse is bozzu. The Hebrew is a repeated command to plunder, not merely a description of treasure. Its root connects the act of taking with the loot produced by that act, making the storehouse’s abundance immediately vulnerable.
ALSO GROWS
baz: Booty, spoil.
בַּז
This noun names the goods as the result of the plundering verb.
bizzah: Spoil, plunder.
בִּזָּה
The related noun makes clear that what is prized can become the very thing seized.
חֶמְדָּה
chemdah
GROWS FROM
חמד
chamad
To desire, find desirable.
The word rendered “pleasant” carries the sense of what is desired or prized. The objects are marked by the longing they stir; their desirability does not protect them from being taken.
ALSO GROWS
chamad: To desire, covet, or take pleasure in.
חָמַד
The verb reveals the wanting contained in what is called desirable.
machmad: A desirable or precious thing.
מַחְמָד
This noun applies the same root to a prized object, like the vessels named in the verse.
כָּבֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy, weighty.
The word rendered “glory” is kavod, whose root carries the sense of weight. Beside silver, gold, and prized vessels, that weight evokes the tangible substance of wealth, substantial, yet still carried away.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This form shows the root’s concrete sense of weight beneath “glory.”
kibbed: To honor, give weight to.
כִּבֵּד
To honor someone is to treat them as having weight, linking esteem to the root’s physical sense.
THE PATTERN
Accumulated wealth remains vulnerable to seizure, loss, and decay; abundance cannot secure its possession.
There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.THE THREAD
I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.The Hebrew root בזז (bazaz), “to plunder,” appears in Nahum’s command and in Isaiah’s phrase “to take the prey.” Both expose how treasured things become loot under violent power; Isaiah sharpens the link by naming the force that turns possession into spoil.
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