What Does Zechariah 2:5 Mean in the King James?
For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her.
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 LORD is both her fiery perimeter and the weight inhabiting her center, so protection and presence surround and fill her at once.
THE MEANING
The LORD surrounds her like a wall of fire and is the weight at her center. The image holds outer boundary and inner presence together: the same divine nearness encloses and inhabits her.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the divine can only guard from a distance: the one who surrounds her is also present within her.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
Kavod carries the sense of weight alongside its familiar sense of glory. Here the word places the LORD’s weighty presence at her center, while the fire forms her boundary.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This adjective shares the root’s concrete sense of weight and gives substance to the presence at her center.
kibbēd: To honor, treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
The root links honor with assigning weight, showing how glory carries both presence and significance.
סָבִיב
saviv
GROWS FROM
סבב
s-b-b
To turn, circle, or go around.
“round about” in this verse is saviv. The word belongs to a family of terms for circling and surrounding. The image is a protective circumference: the fire extends all around her, while the LORD’s weight is within.
ALSO GROWS
sābab: To turn, circle, or go around.
סָבַב
This verb makes the motion behind “round about” visible: the boundary goes around her.
sevivah: Surroundings, environment.
סְבִיבָה
This branch names the space around something, echoing the verse’s encompassing fire.
THE PATTERN
Divine protection surrounds the dwelling while divine presence occupies its center.
As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.THE THREAD
Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.The same Hebrew word, kavod, names the LORD’s glory here and in Exodus. Its sense of weight opens “in the midst” as an inhabited center: the surrounding fire and the inward presence belong to one image.
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