What Does Numbers 22:17 Mean in the King James?
For I will promote thee unto very great honour, and I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me: come therefore, I pray thee, curse me this people.
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
Honor is offered as weight for a voice being asked to pronounce a curse over a people.
THE MEANING
Great honor and a promise to do whatever you ask accompany a request to curse an entire people. The reward and the harm belong to the same offer, so recognition does not conceal what the words are being asked to do.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a generous offer honoring your voice must be asking something worthy of it; here, the promised honor sits beside a demand to curse a whole people.
THE ROOT
כבד
kāḇaḏ
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to honor or treat as weighty.
“honour” in this verse is kāḇaḏ. The verb for honor here comes from כבד, the root of heaviness: to honor is to treat as weighty. Balak’s promise places weight on Balaam’s standing while asking him to aim a curse at a people.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This branch keeps honor joined to weight: Balak promises to make Balaam’s standing count for much.
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
The shared root carries physical heaviness into social weight, revealing what the promised honor is meant to confer.
THE PATTERN
A reward offered for speech or judgment can bend a voice away from truth.
Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous.The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness;THE THREAD
Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the LORD saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.The same root, כבד (kabad, weight or honor), appears in both the offered honor here and the repeated honor in Samuel. The shared root reveals honor as weight: it can be dangled to secure a voice, or given in response to what is treated as weighty.
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