What Does Micah 6:13 Mean?
So I will make you sick in striking you, and make you desolate because of your shortcomings.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.THE KEY
Here judgment for missing the mark becomes bodily: God’s sentence moves through sickness, striking, and desolation.
THE MEANING
You are addressed in a sentence where judgment reaches the body and the conditions of life: sickness, a blow, and desolation. It names the misses as the cause and God as the one acting; the force of the sentence stays severe.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that judgment is only an invisible verdict: here it takes bodily and material form.
THE ROOT
הֶחֱלֵיתִי
hecheleti
GROWS FROM
חלה
The root חלה (ḥ-l-h) means to be weak or sick; in this causative form, to make sick.
English gives “sick” as a condition, while the Hebrew form says “I made you sick,” naming God as the agent of the affliction. The same root appears in Isaiah 53:10, where the KJV renders it “put him to grief,” joining grief and sickness within one Hebrew verb family.
ALSO GROWS
ḥolî: Sickness or disease.
חֳלִי
This noun names the condition held inside the verb “make sick.”
hechali: Made sick; rendered “put him to grief” in Isaiah 53:10.
הֶחֱלִי
The shared root makes the affliction in Micah and the grief in Isaiah sound in one linguistic register.
הַשְׁמֵם
hashmem
GROWS FROM
שמם
The root שמם (š-m-m) means to be desolate or devastated, and can also describe being appalled or stunned.
“Desolate” carries more than an empty place: this root also names the stunned response to devastation. The verse holds both the ruined condition and the shock of seeing it.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation or a wasteland.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun makes the devastation a condition that remains, not just a passing blow.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
The same root links the devastated state with the stunned response it produces.
חַטֹּאתֶיךָ
chatoteikha
GROWS FROM
חטא
The root חטא (ḥ-ṭ-ʾ) means to miss or go wrong; here it names the reader’s “misses.”
“shortcomings” in this verse is chatoteikha. The cause is expressed through the language of missing, rather than left as an abstract label. In this sentence, those misses are tied directly to sickness, striking, and desolation.
ALSO GROWS
ḥeṭʾ: A miss or wrongdoing.
חֵטְא
This form shows the root’s basic image beneath the broader English word “sin.”
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A miss; in ritual contexts, an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same root can name both the wrongdoing and an offering addressing it, while Micah’s plural here names the cause of judgment.
THE PATTERN
Judgment for wrongdoing can take bodily and material form, making the damage of a life visible.
The LORD shall strike you with wasting, and with burning fever, and with the flame, and with the parching, and with the sword, and with the scorching wind, and with the yellowing. They shall pursue you until you perish.Therefore God gave them over in the cravings of their hearts into uncleanness, for their bodies to be made weightless among themselves.THE THREAD
Yet the LORD delighted to crush him, and to sicken him. When you make his living soul a guilt offering, he shall see his seed, and lengthen his days, and the delight of the LORD shall break through in his hand.Micah’s “I make you sick” and Isaiah’s “put him to grief” use forms of חלה (ḥ-l-h), the same Hebrew root. English names sickness here and grief there; the shared verb reveals a connection in how both verses speak of inflicted affliction, while their contexts and outcomes remain distinct.
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