What Does 1 Chronicles 18:4 Mean?
And David seized from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen, and David hamstrung all the chariot horses, but left a hundred chariots from among them.
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
And David took from him a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: David also houghed all the chariot horses, but reserved of them an hundred chariots.THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “houghed” means to uproot as well as to hamstring: the captured force is dismantled at the bodies that make it move.
THE MEANING
You see victory measured in bodies and limits: the captured force is made unable to move, while a hundred chariots remain. The verb for “houghed” also carries the sense of uprooting, joining military defeat to the removal of capacity at its root. The scene does not let conquest become an abstract count; horses are physically disabled.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that taking possession of an enemy’s strength leaves that strength intact: here, possession is paired with making its power unusable.
THE ROOT
וַיְעַקֵּר
wayyaʿqēr
GROWS FROM
עקר
ʿ-q-r
to uproot; to hamstring by disabling an animal’s tendons
“hamstrung” in this verse is wayyaʿqēr. English gives a technical term for disabling horses; עקר also carries the force of uprooting. Its word family reaches into barrenness, joining lost mobility with the removal of capacity to produce.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāqār: Barren; without offspring.
עָקָר
The same root links the horses’ disabled capacity for movement with life stripped of fruitfulness.
ʿăqārāh: A barren woman.
עֲקָרָה
This branch extends the root’s image of capacity cut off from movement to capacity cut off from bearing.
וַיּוֹתֵר
wayyōṯēr
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
to remain, be left over, or exceed
“left” in this verse is wayyōṯēr. The hundred chariots are a measured remainder inside a much larger capture. The same root supplies words for surplus and advantage, so the verse holds both deliberate disabling and deliberate sparing in view.
ALSO GROWS
yether: Remainder; surplus.
יֶתֶר
The root makes the hundred chariots a portion left over from the captured force.
yithron: Profit; advantage.
יִתְרוֹן
This branch carries the root’s sense of what remains as a gain or advantage.
דָּוִד
Dāwīd
GROWS FROM
דוד
d-w-d
beloved; a beloved one
David’s name carries the sense “beloved,” while the verse gives a severe account of military victory. The name does not soften the hamstringing; it keeps the actor’s nature in the scene without making the violence gentle.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: Beloved; also a male kinsman or uncle.
דּוֹד
This form carries the relational sense of beloved that the name David holds.
dōdîm: Loves; expressions of affection.
דּוֹדִים
This plural form from the same root shows the name’s connection to the language of love.
THE PATTERN
Scripture depicts victory through the breaking or disabling of war’s instruments, so force loses its capacity to carry itself forward.
And the LORD threw Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his camp, into an uproar by the mouth of the sword before Barak. And Sisera came down from the chariot and fled on his feet.He halts wars to the edge of the earth; he breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in two; he burns the wagons in the fire.THE THREAD
O my living soul, come not into their circle; to their assembly do not join my weight, for in their anger they killed a man, and in their wanting they hamstrung an ox.The KJV renders Genesis 49:6 as “digged down a wall,” but its Hebrew shares עקר, the hamstringing and uprooting root behind “houghed” here. The echo places the same disabling act beside ungoverned anger there, making the violence in this verse’s military tally unmistakably physical.
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