What Does Nahum 3:4 Mean in the King James?
Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.
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 exposes beauty used as a marketplace: seduction and sorcery turn nations and families into goods.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes a power that makes attraction and hidden influence instruments for selling people. Its violence reaches beyond the seduced individual: nations become merchandise, and families bear the harm.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that beauty or spiritual power makes a bond trustworthy; here both become tools for selling people.
THE ROOT
זְנוּנֶיהָ
zenuneha
GROWS FROM
זנה
Commit sexual infidelity; act as a prostitute.
“Harlot” and “whoredoms” both descend from זנה, even though English gives them different forms. Their shared root joins her identity to her acts: desire becomes a means of selling nations and families.
ALSO GROWS
zonah: A prostitute; a harlot.
זוֹנָה
This is the same root-family as the verse’s “harlot,” linking the woman’s identity with the repeated “whoredoms.”
zanah: To commit sexual infidelity; to act as a prostitute.
זָנָה
The verb makes the root’s action explicit: the repeated language is about an ongoing practice, not merely a label.
כְּשָׁפֶיהָ
keshafeha
GROWS FROM
כשף
Practice sorcery.
The verse repeats this root in naming both her witchcrafts and the witchcrafts through which families are sold. It presents hidden influence as a channel of capture that reaches beyond one person to an entire household.
ALSO GROWS
kashaf: To practice sorcery.
כָּשַׁף
The verb shows the action behind the verse’s “witchcrafts”: influence is being actively used to ensnare.
mekhashef: A sorcerer; one who practices sorcery.
מְכַשֵּׁף
This agent noun shares the root and makes visible the practitioner behind the influence the verse describes.
הַמֹּכֶרֶת
hamokheret
GROWS FROM
מכר
Sell; transfer in exchange for payment.
“selleth” in this verse is hamokheret. The Hebrew verb comes from מ-כ-ר, “sell.” This blunt commercial root sits beside the language of sex and sorcery: the verse says nations and families are sold, not merely persuaded.
ALSO GROWS
makhar: To sell.
מָכַר
This verb is the root action in “selleth,” making the exchange explicit.
mimkar: A sale; something sold.
מִמְכָּר
This noun shares the root’s consonants and carries the same commercial sense that makes the verse’s treatment of people so stark.
THE PATTERN
When seduction and hidden influence become instruments of trade, whole communities are drawn into the exchange.
But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.THE THREAD
But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root כ-ש-ף (k-sh-f, practice sorcery) that appears in Nahum’s “witchcrafts.” Here it stands beside the loss of children and widowhood, exposing the household cost of the influence Nahum describes.
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