What Does Deuteronomy 20:13 Mean?
And when the LORD your God gives it into your hands, you shall strike every male in it 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
And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:THE KEY
Here, “the LORD hath delivered it” means transfer into the victor’s hands, and the sentence names the result: every male is killed by the sword.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in a command: when the LORD hands a city over, every male there is to be struck down with the sword. Divine transfer and gendered slaughter remain joined in one sentence, without softening the violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that “delivered” necessarily means rescued: here, the city is delivered into a victor’s hand, and the next clause commands the killing of all its males.
THE ROOT
וּנְתָנָהּ
u-netanah from natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
“gives it into your hands” in this verse is u-netanah from natan. The root names a handover, not the moral character of that handover: here the city is given into the victor’s hand, and the sentence continues with a command to kill. The same root forms מַתָּנָה (mattanah, “gift”), but this transfer’s consequence is explicit in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the root beneath “delivered”; the city is given into someone’s hand.
mattanah: Gift; something given.
מַתָּנָה
This noun shares the root of “given” in the next verse, where the transfer includes people and property designated as spoil.
וְהִכִּיתָ
we-hikkita from nakah
GROWS FROM
נכה
To strike or inflict a blow.
“strike” in this verse is we-hikkita from nakah. The verb names physical striking. The phrase KJV renders “edge of the sword” is פִּי חֶרֶב (pî ḥerev, literally “mouth of a sword”), making the weapon’s violence concrete in the Hebrew expression.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
The related noun names the impact as a blow, bringing out the bodily force of “smite.”
hikkah: Struck or hit; a form of the same verb.
הִכָּה
This form keeps the action concrete: the command is to strike, not merely to defeat or overcome.
THE PATTERN
In these conquest commands, a people or city being given over under divine authority leads directly to commands of annihilation.
When the LORD your God gives them before you, you shall strike them and devote them to destruction. You shall cut no covenant with them, nor show them favor.But from the cities of these peoples, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall keep alive nothing with breath. But you shall utterly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded you.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.THE THREAD
But the women, the little ones, the cattle, and all that is in the city, all its plunder, you shall take for yourself; and you shall eat the plunder of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.The Hebrew root נתן (natan, “give, set, place”) appears again in “hath given thee,” tying this verse’s handover to the command that follows. The next verse names women, children, livestock, and property as spoil, exposing what this sequence prescribes for the rest of the city.
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