What Does Deuteronomy 21:10 Mean?
When you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hands, and you lead away their captives.
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
When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive,THE KEY
The Hebrew uses the same root for taking captive and for the captives, making captivity itself the explicit outcome of conquest.
THE MEANING
The verse names a stark sequence: you go to war against your enemies, the LORD gives them into your hand, and you take captives. The repeated Hebrew root keeps both the act of capture and the people captured visible in the sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that victory is only a change of control: the stated result is people held captive.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁבִיתָ שִׁבְיוֹ
veshavita shivyo
GROWS FROM
שׁבה
shavah
to take captive
“lead away their captives” in this verse is veshavita shivyo. The verb and its object grow from the same root: the wording is close to “you capture its captives.” That repetition places the people made captive, not just the victory, at the center of the verse.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: to take captive
שָׁבָה
This is the action named in the verse, rooted in the same three consonants as its object.
shevi: captivity; captives
שְׁבִי
The noun names the condition and the people produced by the act of capture.
sheviyah: captivity
שְׁבִיָּה
This related form carries the same root into the state of being held captive.
וּנְתָנוֹ
u-netano
GROWS FROM
נתן
to give, set, place
“gives them” in this verse is u-netano. The verb’s root means giving or placing: the verse presents the enemies as placed into your hand before it names their capture. The sequence holds the transfer of power and the human act that follows together.
ALSO GROWS
natan: to give, set, place
נָתַן
This is the verb used in the verse: the enemies are given into the hand.
mattan: gift
מַתָּן
This related noun shows the same root’s sense of something given; here, what is placed in the hand is control over captives.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names captivity as a condition experienced by people and describes deliverance as release from it.
Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.The breath of the Lord LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the bowed ones; he has sent me to bind up the broken of heart, to proclaim flowing freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are chained.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
You have climbed to the height; you have taken captive the captives; you have taken gifts among humankind, even the ones who turn away, so that the LORD God might settle among them.Both verses use forms of שׁבה (shavah, “to take captive”): Deuteronomy says you take captives, while the Psalm says God leads captivity captive. The same root that names people being captured here becomes an image of captivity itself being taken away.
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