What Does 2 Samuel 18:11 Mean?
And Joab said to the man who told him, Look, you saw him, and why did you not strike him there to the ground? And I would have given you ten shekels of silver and a girdle.
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 Joab said unto the man that told him, And, behold, thou sawest him, and why didst thou not smite him there to the ground? and I would have given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle.THE KEY
Joab makes a blow sound like a paid assignment, but the offer changes its price, not its nature.
THE MEANING
A person can be pressed to injure someone through promised compensation. The verse names the demanded act plainly, striking someone down to the ground, and places silver and a belt beside it, so the person struck never disappears behind the bargain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a reward can make violence harmless or erase the person who receives the blow.
THE ROOT
הִכִּיתוֹ
hikkitō
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
Strike, smite.
“strike” in this verse is hikkitō. The same root names the act of striking and words for a blow or someone struck. English can make the command sound like a task; the Hebrew keeps the force of the blow in view.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: A blow; also a plague.
מַכָּה
The blow Joab proposes belongs to the same word family as a devastating strike.
mukkeh: One who is struck or wounded.
מֻכֶּה
This branch keeps the person receiving the blow present inside the action.
כֶּסֶף
kesef
GROWS FROM
כסף
k-s-p
Silver; the same root family also includes longing or yearning.
The Hebrew word family places silver beside longing. Here, the promised payment gives desire a concrete object while the demanded act remains a blow.
ALSO GROWS
kasaph: To long for, yearn.
כָּסַף
This verbal branch links the silver offered to the desire a reward can awaken.
kesef: Silver; money.
כֶּסֶף
This is the promised payment that gives the violence a price.
וְאֶתְּנָה
va'ettenah
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, place.
“given” in this verse is va'ettenah. The verb makes the reward a promise Joab would place in the man’s hands for carrying out the strike. The exchange ties the offer directly to the violence.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
Joab promises to give the reward if the man strikes.
mattanah: A gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun shows how an offered gift can become part of an exchange.
THE PATTERN
When a reward is attached to betrayal or harm, another person’s safety becomes a transaction.
Do not take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the open-eyed and twists the words of the aligned.And the rulers of the Philistines came up to her, and said to her, Coax him, and see where his great strength lies, and with what we may overpower him, that we may bind him to bend him low. And we will give you, each of us, eleven hundred pieces of silver.And said to them, What will you give me, and I will hand him over to you? And they set out for him thirty pieces of silver.THE THREAD
And it was in those days, when Moses had grown, that he went out to his brothers, and looked on their loads. And he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers.The Hebrew verb Joab uses for striking shares its root with the word for the Egyptian striking a Hebrew. That shared word keeps the physical violence in view, whether it appears as oppression or is offered as a paid task.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us