What Does Nehemiah 13:8 Mean in the King James?
And it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber.
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 calls the arrangement “bad to me” and answers with “I cast out”, a chamber is cleared by subtraction.
THE MEANING
A chamber meant for set-apart use is occupied by another household’s things, and the mismatch registers as deeply bad. The response is physical: all those belongings are thrown out. The space opens through removal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being inside a sacred place does not make something rightly placed there.
THE ROOT
וָאַשְׁלִיךְ
va’ashlikh
GROWS FROM
שלך
shalakh
to throw or cast
“cast forth” in this verse is va’ashlikh. The verb names a forceful removal, not a quiet rearrangement. Hebrew lets the verse’s action carry the weight: the household goods leave the chamber by being cast out.
ALSO GROWS
shalakh: to throw, cast
שָׁלַךְ
This is the root action behind the verse’s “cast forth.”
vayyashlikhu: and they cast
וַיַּשְׁלִיכוּ
The same root appears in 2 Kings 13:21, where a man is cast into Elisha’s tomb; the different destination gives the act a startlingly different outcome.
וַיֵּרַע
vayyeraʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
raʿaʿ
to be bad, displeasing, or harmful
“grieved” in this verse is vayyeraʿ. The phrase וַיֵּרַע לִי (vayyeraʿ li) says, in effect, “it was bad to me.” The root names the situation as wrong before the verse shows the response of clearing it.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: bad, evil
רַע
This adjective gives the root’s basic sense: what is wrong or harmful.
raʿah: bad or evil, feminine form
רָעָה
The related form shows the same root sense carried into another grammatical form.
טוֹבִיָּה
Toviyah
GROWS FROM
טוב
tov
good, pleasant, beneficial
“Tobiah” in this verse is Toviyah. Toviyah joins tov (טוֹב, “good”) with Yah (יָהּ, a short form of YHWH): “YHWH is good.” The verse holds that name’s confession beside the concrete fact that his household goods are cast out, separating the meaning of a name from the placement of its belongings.
ALSO GROWS
tov: good, pleasant
טוֹב
This is the element of the name that carries the meaning “good.”
tuv: goodness, good things
טוּב
This related form carries the root’s goodness as a quality or substance, echoing the name’s claim without deciding where the household goods belong.
THE PATTERN
A space set apart is restored by removing what occupies it wrongly.
Then Jacob said unto his household, and to all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments:And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;THE THREAD
And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.Both verses use שלך (shalakh), “to cast.” Here household goods are cast out of a chamber; there a man is cast into a tomb and rises when he touches Elisha’s bones. The shared verb makes the force of the throwing visible, while what happens next depends on what the cast one meets.
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