What Does Deuteronomy 3:7 Mean?
Only the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we stripped for ourselves.
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 all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities, we took for a prey to ourselves.THE KEY
The verse pairs the act of plundering with the spoil it produces, making possession the measure of conquest.
THE MEANING
Here, victory has a material face: cattle and the wealth of captured cities pass into the victors’ own hands. The verse lets you see conquest at the level of possession, where the taking does not disappear inside a grander word.
THE ROOT
בָּזַזְנוּ
bazaznu
GROWS FROM
ב־ז־ז
To plunder or strip away; to take as spoil.
“stripped for ourselves” in this verse is bazaznu. The form בָּזַזְנוּ (bazaznu, “we plundered”) names the taking, while בַּז (baz, “prey” or “booty”) names what the plundering yields. Together they bring the transfer of concrete goods into view: what is taken becomes “for ourselves.”
ALSO GROWS
bazaz: To plunder or strip away.
בָּזַז
This verb names the act of taking in the verse.
baz: Prey or booty.
בַּז
This noun names what the act produces, echoing the verse’s “for a prey.”
שָׁלָל
shalal
GROWS FROM
ש־ל־ל
To strip or plunder; spoil taken from another.
שָׁלָל (shalal, “spoil” or “booty”) names the goods taken from the cities, while the related verb שָׁלַל (shalal, “to plunder”) names the taking. Beside bazaz (בָּזַז, bazaz; “to plunder”), it makes the line hold both the act and its collected result.
ALSO GROWS
shalal: Spoil, booty, or goods seized.
שָׁלָל
This noun names the cities’ wealth as the result of capture.
shalal: To strip or plunder.
שָׁלַל
This verbal branch echoes the action that turns a city’s goods into spoil.
THE PATTERN
The language of conquest tracks power through the transfer of what the conquered hold into the conqueror’s hands.
And they took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and strip away his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then he will strip his house.I will send him against a soiled nation, and against the people of my overflow I will charge him, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to trample them like the mire of the streets.THE THREAD
I will send him against a soiled nation, and against the people of my overflow I will charge him, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to trample them like the mire of the streets.Isaiah pairs שָׁלָל (shalal, “spoil”) with בַּז (baz, “prey”), from the same root as בָּזַז (bazaz, “to plunder”) in this verse. The repeated pairing lets you see the taking and the goods seized as parts of one movement.
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