What Does Numbers 25:9 Mean in the King James?

And those that died in the plague were twenty and four thousand.

Numbers 25:9 · KJV

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 word for “plague” carries the force of a blow, and the count tells you how many lives that blow takes.

THE MEANING

The verse faces you with the cost of a plague: twenty-four thousand dead. Its exact count keeps the scale visible, even though the people remain unnamed.

THE ROOT

מַגֵּפָה

maggephah

GROWS FROM

נגף

To strike or smite; to cause a stumble.

The Hebrew word maggephah grows from the root for striking, so the plague is pictured as a blow landing on people. The number keeps that blow’s human cost in view.

ALSO GROWS

nagaph: To strike, smite, or cause to stumble.

נָגַף

This verb makes the force carried by “plague” explicit: the calamity is a striking blow.

negef: A blow, stumbling, or calamity.

נֶגֶף

This related noun carries the same movement from impact to harm, illuminating the violence behind the counted deaths.

THE PATTERN

The text makes catastrophe’s human cost legible by counting the dead.

Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven hundred, beside them that died about the matter of Korah.

Numbers 16:49 · KJVThe verse gives the plague’s toll as a precise number, making mass death concrete.

So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed: and there died of the people from Dan even to Beer-sheba seventy thousand men.

2 Samuel 24:15 · KJVThe account names a vast death toll rather than leaving the destruction unmeasured.

By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

Revelation 9:18 · KJVEven in a vision of devastation, the text gives the scale of those killed.

THE THREAD

For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.

Exodus 12:23 · KJV

The Hebrew word for “smite” here comes from the same root, ⁨נגף⁩ (nagaph), as “plague” in Numbers. That shared root holds the calamity as a blow, while the count in Numbers makes its cost unmistakable.

This reading is from Selah Verse.

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