What Does 1 Chronicles 5:21 Mean?
And they carried off their herds, of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of donkeys two thousand, and of living souls of men a hundred thousand.
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 they took away their cattle; of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of men an hundred thousand.THE KEY
The final tally is one hundred thousand נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh, living souls): human lives carried away in the same act of capture as the herds.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the taking a precise scale: fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, two thousand donkeys, and one hundred thousand human beings. It names the people within the same captured inventory as the animals, keeping the violence concrete rather than abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the tally is only property: the last number counts human beings seized alongside the animals.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nephesh
GROWS FROM
נפש
Living soul, the living self or person.
“living souls of men” in this verse is nephesh. Behind “men” stands the phrase נֶפֶשׁ אָדָם (nephesh adam, a human living soul). The verse counts these living persons explicitly after counting animals, so the final number is a human tally inside the spoils of war.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul; a living person.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the noun carried into the phrase for the one hundred thousand human beings.
naphash: Rest; be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
The related verb describes a living person’s rest or refreshment, widening the person in this count beyond a unit of inventory.
וַיִּשְׁבּוּ
wayyishbu
GROWS FROM
שבה
To take captive; carry away as a captive.
“carried off” in this verse is wayyishbu. The action is capture: this root names both taking captive and the state of captivity. The KJV rendering “took away” carries that act across the herds and the human count.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: To take captive.
שָׁבָה
This is the verb’s base form behind the taking, giving the action its captivity sense.
shevi: Captive; captivity.
שְׁבִי
The noun names the condition created by the taking, so the people tally follows the verb into captivity.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names captivity as a concrete condition imposed on persons, and release as a concrete movement out of it.
And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria.The breath of the Lord LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the bowed ones; he has sent me to bind up the broken of heart, to proclaim flowing freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are chained.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Wake, wake, Deborah; wake, wake, speak a song. Rise, Barak, and take your captives captive, son of Abinoam.Judges pairs שְׁבִי (shevi, captivity) with שָׁבָה (shavah, take captive), turning the same root into “lead thy captivity captive.” The shared root makes the force of “took away” unmistakable, while Judges flips the direction: what captures can itself be captured.
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