What Does Deuteronomy 13:15 Mean?
You shall surely strike those who settle in that city with the mouth of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and its livestock, with the mouth of the sword.
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
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.THE KEY
The sword falls on the entire city, cattle included, as though every life within it belongs to one condemned whole.
THE MEANING
You meet a decree whose reach includes every inhabitant and every animal in the city. It does not state an exemption for any of them. The verse leaves the violence of that total scope in plain view.
THE ROOT
הַחֲרֵם תַּחֲרִים
haḥărēm taḥărīm
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ם
ḥ-r-m
To place under a ban, devote irrevocably, or destroy.
“destroying it utterly” in this verse is haḥărēm taḥărīm. The root is repeated in an emphatic Hebrew construction: place it under the ban, surely place it under the ban. Here, that act reaches the whole city and everything living in it; the language of destruction also carries the sense of being irrevocably devoted.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāram: To place under a ban or devote irrevocably.
חָרַם
This verbal form shows that the command is framed as an act of placing the city under a total ban.
ḥērem: A ban, or something devoted under that ban.
חֵרֶם
This noun makes visible the status given to the city: it is set apart for destruction, with its inhabitants and cattle included in the decree.
THE PATTERN
When judgment is declared total, the text can extend its reach beyond combatants to every life within its scope.
Whoever slaughters to any god, except to the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction.And they devoted to destruction all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and donkey, with the mouth of the sword.And the rest are slain by the sword of the one who sits on the horse, the sword that goes out from his mouth, and all the birds are filled with their flesh.THE THREAD
People settle in it, and there is no more devoted thing; and Jerusalem settles, leaning her full weight.The phrase “utter destruction” translates the same root, חרם, that marks the city in this verse. Zechariah places that root beside a city where there is “no more utter destruction,” opening a direct contrast between a city under the ban and one safely inhabited.
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