What Does Deuteronomy 20:11 Mean?
And it shall be, if it answers you with wholeness and opens to you, then it shall be that all the people found in it shall bear tribute to you, and they shall serve you.
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 it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.THE KEY
Here, “peace” is the term under which an opened city’s people become the conqueror’s tribute and labor.
THE MEANING
The verse names a bargain: a city opens to the stronger power, and its people become subject to tribute and service. Here, peace is an agreement under conquest, and its cost is explicit. Survival and subordination occupy the same sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A peace agreement necessarily makes both sides equal and whole. This verse shows that a city can open under peace terms while its people become tributaries and servants.
THE ROOT
וַעֲבָדוּךָ
va’avadukha
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
Work or serve; labor under another’s authority.
The same root names both the act of serving and the servant who does it. In this verse, “serve” belongs beside tribute: the people’s survival comes with their labor placed under the victor’s authority.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant or bondservant
עֶבֶד
The noun from this root makes the status behind “they shall serve thee” visible.
avodah: Work, labor, or service
עֲבֹדָה
This branch holds the concrete work inside the verse’s account of service.
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
Be whole, complete, or sound; in some forms, make good or repay.
Shalom carries the sense of wholeness, while this verse uses it for a city’s answer accepting terms. Its stated outcome, tribute and service, shows that an agreement called peace does not, by itself, make the relationship whole.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete, or sound
שָׁלֵם
This branch reveals the wholeness carried within the word for peace, against the subordination named in the verse.
shillem: Repaid or recompensed
שִׁלֵּם
This related form adds the sense of making good or paying back, beside the tribute exacted here.
THE PATTERN
Under unequal power, peaceful terms can spare a people while converting them into tribute and labor.
Now therefore you are cursed, and none of you shall be cut off from being servants, cutters of wood and drawers of waters for the house of my God.He will take the tenth of your flocks; and you shall be his servants.But Jesus called them to him, and said, You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and the great ones press authority down upon them.THE THREAD
And Joshua made wholeness with them, and cut a covenant with them, to let them live; and the lifted ones of the assembly swore to them.Both verses use שָׁלוֹם (shalom, peace) for terms between a city and the power approaching it. Joshua names peace as the condition that lets the people live; this verse makes visible the subordination that can accompany such terms.
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