What Does Psalm 78:47 Mean in the King James?
He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycomore trees with frost.
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 verse makes the land’s loss a killing: hail and frost strike the living growth that feeds and shades.
THE MEANING
The vine and the sycamore are living growth, and the verse names their destruction without softening it. Hail strikes one; frost strikes the other. Devastation reaches both what feeds and what shelters.
THE ROOT
יַהֲרֹג
yaharog
GROWS FROM
הרג
h-r-g
To kill, to slay.
The Hebrew verb behind “destroyed” is הָרַג (harag), “to kill, to slay,” so the line presents the vine and sycamores as living growth struck down. Related forms name the killer and the slain, keeping the image inside the language of life and death.
ALSO GROWS
horeg: One who kills; a killer.
הֹרֵג
This active form carries the verse’s act of striking living growth into the same root family.
harug: One slain; a slain person.
הָרוּג
This passive form makes the consequence of the root’s action visible: what is struck is treated as something living that can be killed.
THE PATTERN
When devastation reaches the land, it strikes the growth that feeds and shelters life.
He smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the trees of their coasts.The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.THE THREAD
He smote their vines also and their fig trees; and brake the trees of their coasts.Psalm 105:33 repeats the Hebrew noun גֶּפֶן (gephen, vine) in the phrase “their vines,” making the same target audible across both verses. The mention of fig trees alongside it sharpens the image into the destruction of fruit-bearing growth.
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