What Does Nehemiah 1:8 Mean in the King James?
Remember, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandedst thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations:
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 warning makes scattering the communal shape of a breach in trust.
THE MEANING
You hear a direct condition and consequence: covenant breach brings a people into dispersion among the nations. The prayer names that consequence before God, holding rupture and relationship within one address.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a breach stays private and leaves a community intact. Here, broken faith carries a communal consequence: scattering among the nations.
THE ROOT
אָפִיץ
ʾāfîṣ
GROWS FROM
פוץ
p-w-ts
To scatter or disperse, breaking up what was gathered.
“scatter” in this verse is ʾāfîṣ. This root gives scattering a concrete shape: people once together are spread across separate places. Here, the dispersal is the communal consequence of a breach in trust.
ALSO GROWS
wayyāpeṣ: He scattered
וַיָּפֶץ
Genesis 11:8 uses the same root for a people scattered from a shared place.
tĕfûṣênāh: They shall be scattered
תְּפוּצֶינָה
Zechariah 13:7 uses the root for sheep scattered when their shepherd is struck.
תִּמְעָלוּ
timʿālû
GROWS FROM
מעל
m-ʿ-l
To act unfaithfully or commit a breach of trust.
“transgress” in this verse is timʿālû. The word carries a relational shade: acting faithlessly, breaching trust. That shade makes the scattering a rupture with communal consequences, not a consequence detached from relationship.
ALSO GROWS
timʿālû: You act unfaithfully
תִּמְעָלוּ
This is the verb in the verse; it frames the condition as a breach of trust.
maʿal: Breach of faith, treachery
מַעַל
This noun form names the breach itself, making explicit the relational force of the action.
THE PATTERN
When a gathered people lose their shared center, they become dispersed across separate places.
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.THE THREAD
And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.Leviticus 26:33 gives the remembered warning in full, using the same root פוץ (pûṣ, scatter). That shared root makes “remember the word” concrete: the prayer invokes the covenant consequence of scattering.
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