What Does Numbers 25:18 Mean in the King James?
For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor’s sake.
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 “vexing” is binding pressure: Hebrew calls the hostile ones “binders,” making their scheme a form of constriction.
THE MEANING
Hostility works by pressing you through calculated schemes around Peor. The violence remains explicit: Cozbi is slain in the plague, and her death is named within the same account of that entanglement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that “vex” means mere irritation gives way to the Hebrew’s sharper picture of binding hostility and its deadly cost.
THE ROOT
צֹרְרִים
tsorerim
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind or press; also to act as an adversary.
The Hebrew calls them צֹרְרִים, hostile binders: “vex” can sound like irritation, while the root holds pressure and opposition together. Related words for narrowness and distress let hostility carry the shape of constriction.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight; also an adversary or foe.
צַר
This branch joins opposition with narrowness, giving the verse’s hostility the sense of pressure closing in.
tsarah: Distress, trouble, adversity.
צָרָה
The branch names the constricted condition that hostile pressure creates.
בְּנִכְלֵיהֶם
bənikhlehem
GROWS FROM
נכל
To scheme craftily or deal treacherously.
“wiles / beguiled” in this verse is bənikhlehem. The KJV has “wiles” and “beguiled,” but Hebrew repeats נכל in both the plot and the plotting. The repeated root makes the trap visible as calculated action rather than accidental harm.
ALSO GROWS
nikhlehem: Their schemes or crafty plots.
נִכְלֵיהֶם
The “wiles” are presented as a designed instrument of hostility.
nikkelu: They schemed craftily against you.
נִכְּלוּ
The later “beguiled” repeats the root, tying the scheme to the action carried out against you.
THE PATTERN
Hostility works through concealed schemes that bind a person before its violence is exposed.
The proud have hid a snare for me, and cords; they have spread a net by the wayside; they have set gins for me. Selah.And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him.THE THREAD
But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.The Hebrew word for “adversary” in both verses comes from the root צרר, which also carries the sense of binding or pressing. Numbers names those who act as hostile binders; Exodus turns that adversarial force back against the adversaries.
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