What Does Deuteronomy 20:17 Mean?
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.
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
But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:THE KEY
The root behind “utterly destroy” places the named peoples under a ban, and the verse presents that destruction itself as obedience to a divine command.
THE MEANING
This verse places the reader before a command that names six peoples for total destruction. Its wording makes collective violence the commanded act itself, rather than a consequence left unstated. The verse holds divine authority and the destruction of whole peoples together without softening either.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that scriptural commands always concern private conduct or restrain violence: here, the verse explicitly commands the destruction of whole peoples.
THE ROOT
הַחֲרֵם תַּחֲרִימֵם
haḥărēm taḥărîmēm
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ם
ḥ-r-m
Place under a ban; devote irrevocably. In this passage, that ban is carried out as destruction.
“utterly devote them to destruction” in this verse is haḥărēm taḥărîmēm. Hebrew repeats the same root in an emphatic construction, intensifying the command. The root family also carries the idea of placing something under a ban or devotion; here that status is enacted through the destruction of the named peoples.
ALSO GROWS
ḥērem: A ban or something placed under a ban
חֵרֶם
Joshua 6:17 uses this noun for the city and its inhabitants, showing the same root can name the status behind the destruction.
haḥărēm: To place under the ban, devote
הַחֲרֵם
This verbal form shares the root repeated in Deuteronomy 20:17, making the verse’s emphasis on the commanded act visible in Hebrew.
צִוְּךָ
tsivvekha
GROWS FROM
צ־ו־ה
ts-v-h
Command, charge, or direct.
“commanded” in this verse is tsivvekha. This root makes the stated source of the violence explicit: the verse frames the destruction as an instruction from the LORD. The command language leaves no ambiguity about how the act is presented in the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: Commandment or instruction
מִצְוָה
It is a noun from the same root family, showing how the command is framed as an authoritative directive.
tsav: Command or order
צַו
This concise command form echoes the directive force of “commanded” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
The text frames the total destruction of a people as obedience when the act is named as a divine command.
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.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.Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.THE THREAD
And the city shall be a devoted thing, it and all that are within it, to the LORD. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.Joshua uses the noun חֵרֶם (ḥērem), from the same root as “utterly destroy” here, for the city and everyone in it. The root names a status under the ban, while the same verse makes the boundary between those condemned and the one spared explicit.
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