What Does Nahum 3:3 Mean in the King James?
The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses:
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 weapons flash, but the bodies’ weight turns the ground itself into an obstacle.
THE MEANING
The verse makes violence physical: weapons flash, the slain multiply, and bodies pile up until movement itself becomes stumbling. Its aftermath takes up space and weighs down every step within its reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the brilliance of weapons can keep slaughter abstract: the bodies make its cost impossible to separate from the ground people move across.
THE ROOT
כֹּבֶד
koved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
to be heavy or weighty
The KJV’s “great number” translates a word that means “weight,” making the dead a burden measured not only by count but by mass. The same root forms כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight; honor or glory), connecting what is weighty with what carries significance; here the weight is a crushing heap.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: heavy; weighty
כָּבֵד
It makes the pile’s heaviness concrete: the slain do not merely accumulate, they weigh upon the scene.
kavod: weight; honor or glory
כָּבוֹד
This branch carries the same root’s sense of weight into the language of significance, deepening the force of Nahum’s “weight” of bodies.
וְכָשְׁלוּ
ve-khashlu
GROWS FROM
כשל
k-sh-l
to stumble, totter, or fail
“stumble” in this verse is ve-khashlu. The final movement is a fall among the dead, as though the bodies have become the obstruction underfoot. The root also forms מִכְשׁוֹל (mikshol, obstacle; stumbling block), making the consequence tangible: the violence alters the ground until its aftermath impedes movement.
ALSO GROWS
kashal: to stumble, totter, or fail
כָּשַׁל
It names the loss of footing that closes the verse.
mikshol: obstacle; stumbling block
מִכְשׁוֹל
It reveals the dead not only as casualties but as what now lies in the path.
THE PATTERN
Violence overflows its field until bodies, blood, and aftermath take over the ground where life moves.
Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.THE THREAD
For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.Nahum’s כֹּבֶד (koved, weight) and Psalm’s כָּבֵד (kaved, heavy) share כבד (k-b-d, to be heavy or weighty). In Nahum, the dead weigh upon the ground; in the Psalm, the burden rises over the speaker’s head.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us