What Does Daniel 11:17 Mean?
He also sets his face to enter with the strength of all his kingdom, and the straight ones with him. So he acts, and he gives him the daughter of women, ruining her, but she does not stand on his side, neither is she for him.
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
He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom, and upright ones with him; thus shall he do: and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her: but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him.THE KEY
The arrangement is meant to ruin the woman it gives, and being placed in the ruler’s plan does not make her his.
THE MEANING
The verse lets you see coercion by its own name: a ruler places a woman inside his political design, and the stated aim is to ruin her. Yet she does not stand with him or become his; power can stage an alliance without securing belonging.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being given into someone’s plan means that person belongs to the planner.
THE ROOT
לְהַשְׁחִיתָהּ
lehashchitah
GROWS FROM
שחת
shachat
To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
“ruining” in this verse is lehashchitah. The Hebrew verb joins corruption to active ruin: the arrangement targets a person for harm. The same root describes a corrupted world and names a destroyer, keeping the violence inside the language of alliance visible.
ALSO GROWS
nishchatah: Was corrupt or ruined.
נִשְׁחָתָה
Genesis 6:11 uses this form for the earth, showing the root’s range from corruption to ruin.
hamashchit: The destroyer.
הַמַּשְׁחִית
Exodus 12:23 uses this root for a destructive agent, making its active force clear.
יְשָׁרִים
yesharim
GROWS FROM
ישר
yashar
Straight, right, or upright.
“straight ones” in this verse is yesharim. The word names people as upright, from the same root that describes straightness and rightness. Their presence beside a plan explicitly aimed at ruining her leaves a tension in the verse: standing near power does not by itself make its actions upright.
ALSO GROWS
yashar: Straight, right, or upright.
יָשָׁר
The root’s concrete sense of straightness gives the description “upright ones” its moral weight.
mesharim: Uprightness or equity.
מֵישָׁרִים
This related form names the quality of rightness, sharpening the contrast with the destructive purpose of the arrangement.
THE PATTERN
Human power can arrange an alliance, but it cannot command another person’s allegiance or secure its intended outcome.
And they called Rebekah, and said to her, Will you go with this man? And she said, I will go.Do not lean your weight on the openhanded, nor on the son of man, who holds no deliverance.And now I say to you, Stand away from these men and release them. For if this counsel or this work is of humankind, it will come undone.THE THREAD
The earth also was ruined before God, and the earth was filled with violence.The Hebrew word rendered “corrupting” in Daniel shares the שחת (shachat, ruin or corrupt) root with the word rendered “corrupt” here. That root carries active destruction too, keeping the violence inside Daniel’s arrangement visible beneath its language of alliance.
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