What Does Zechariah 1:2 Mean in the King James?
The LORD hath been sore displeased with your fathers.
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 repeated Hebrew verb makes the LORD’s anger unmistakable, yet the next verse leaves the present open to return.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s anger toward the fathers is emphatic; Hebrew repeats the verb for force. The rupture is real and named. The next line addresses the reader with a call to turn and a promise of reciprocal turning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that inherited history fixes the reader in the same refusal: the next verse speaks to the present with a distinct invitation to turn.
THE ROOT
קָצַף
qāṣap̄
GROWS FROM
קצף
q-ṣ-p
To be angry; to express wrath.
“sore displeased” in this verse is qāṣap̄. The verb qatsaph (קָצַף, “be angry”) repeats as qatsoph (קָצֹף, “being angry”), an intensifying construction: the LORD was angry, indeed angry. The same root can name wrath as a noun or describe provoking anger, so the verse’s force sounds through a family of related forms.
ALSO GROWS
qetseph: Wrath, anger; a noun from the same root.
קֶצֶף
This branch names the anger as a force; the verb here presents it as the LORD’s response toward the fathers.
hiqtsiph: To provoke to anger; the causative form of the root.
הִקְצִיף
This branch shows anger as something that can be provoked. The verse names the LORD’s response, while the next verse names the fathers’ refusal to hear.
THE PATTERN
A call to return can be refused across generations, and that refusal has consequences.
Be ye not as your fathers, unto whom the former prophets have cried, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye now from your evil ways, and from your evil doings: but they did not hear, nor hearken unto me, saith the LORD.But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy.Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.THE THREAD
And I am very sore displeased with the heathen that are at ease: for I was but a little displeased, and they helped forward the affliction.This verse repeats קָצַף (qatsaph, “be angry”), the same root behind “sore displeased,” but turns the LORD’s anger toward nations at ease who worsen Judah’s affliction. The shared root links the fathers’ rupture with the violence that compounds it.
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