What Does 1 Chronicles 20:3 Mean?
And he brought out the people who were in it, and cut them with saws, and with sharpened iron, and with axes. And so David did to all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people turned back to Jerusalem.
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 he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.THE KEY
The return to Jerusalem, a name carrying wholeness, comes immediately after the cutting of a people, with no word that makes the violence whole.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the violence against the people of an Ammonite city beside David and his people returning to Jerusalem. The return closes the account, but the text gives no repair or release for those harmed. Both remain present in the same sentence.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשָׁב
wayyāshav
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
turn back, return
“turned back” in this verse is wayyāshav. Here the return is spatial: David and the people come back to Jerusalem after the violence. The same root can mark turning back, but this verse gives no word that makes their return an undoing of the harm.
ALSO GROWS
shav: returns, turns back
שָׁב
It makes the movement in David’s return visible as a turning back.
teshuvah: return, turning
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch shows the root’s wider sense of turning, while the verse itself names a return to a place.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
be whole, complete
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The closing destination carries shalom, wholeness, in its name. Yet the verse places that name after bodily violence; it does not say the violence has been made whole.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
It lets the name of the destination resonate with wholeness at the verse’s ending.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It brings the root’s sense of completeness beside harm the verse leaves unrepaired.
הוֹצִיא
hotsi
GROWS FROM
יצא
go out, come out
“brought out” in this verse is hotsi. The verb is causative: David brings the city’s people out, making their exit an act of his power. Its root also names ordinary going out, but here going out leads into exposure to violence, not deliverance.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: go out, come out
יָצָא
It shows the basic movement underneath David’s act of bringing the people out.
motsa: outlet, source
מוֹצָא
It shares the root’s sense of an emergence or way out, sharpened here by what the people face after being brought out.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can portray power as authority inflicting bodily harm on people under its control.
Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.And he took the elders of the city, and the thorns of the wilderness and the briers, and with them he made the men of Succoth know.And from his mouth goes out a sharp sword, so that with it he strikes the nations, and he shepherds them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the seething and swelling anger of God the all-ruling.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees. When the LORD turned again the return of Zion, we were like dreamers.“Returned” here and “turned again” in the psalm share the Hebrew root שׁוּב (shuv), meaning to turn back or return. In Chronicles the return follows violence; in the psalm the same root marks Zion’s restoration, opening the difference between coming back to a place and seeing what has been restored.
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