What Does 2 Samuel 21:20 Mean?
And again there was a battle in Gath, where there was a man of great measure, who had six fingers on every hand and six toes on every foot, four and twenty in number, and he also was born to the giant.
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 there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.THE KEY
The verse makes giantness measurable in his body and inherited in his name: twenty-four digits, born to the Rapha.
THE MEANING
You encounter a man whose body is counted with startling precision: six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot, twenty-four in all. The verse places this difference in lineage too, naming him as born to the Rapha. It leaves the strangeness unexplained, holding bodily difference and inherited identity together.
THE ROOT
מָדוֹן
madon
GROWS FROM
מדד
m-d-d
To measure or take dimensions.
The Hebrew term translated “great stature” is associated with the root for measuring, giving the description the sense of a man of measure. The verse then makes that measure exact by counting his fingers and toes.
ALSO GROWS
madad: To measure or take dimensions.
מָדַד
The verb makes the verse’s exact bodily count part of its language of measure.
middah: A measure, dimension, or portion.
מִדָּה
The stature and the count together give the extraordinary body a concrete scale.
יֻלַּד
yullad
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To give birth or beget.
The verse does more than describe an unusual body: it places the man in a lineage, “born to the Rapha.” The same root underlies words for a child and generations, linking his bodily difference with inherited belonging.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: A child or offspring.
יֶלֶד
This branch makes the family relationship inside “born to” audible.
toledot: Generations, descent, or account of origins.
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The man’s extraordinary body is presented within a line of descent, not as an isolated marvel.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes giant scale tangible through countable measurements, objects, and lineage.
For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. Look, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? Nine forearms was its length, and four its breadth, by the forearm of a man.And there went out a man of the between from the camp of the Philistines, Goliath by name, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.These four were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants.THE THREAD
Who measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, marks out heaven with a hand's span, holds the dust of the earth in a measuring basket, weighs the mountains in the scales, and the hills in the balance?The word behind “great stature” is associated with the root מדד (madad), meaning “to measure,” which also appears in Isaiah’s measured waters. Here measurement makes one extraordinary body countable; Isaiah extends the same language across the waters, earth, and heavens.
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