What Does Exodus 17:13 Mean?
And Joshua wore down Amalek and his people 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 Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.THE KEY
The Hebrew names Amalek’s defeat as a weakening, while the “mouth of the sword” makes that violence bodily and direct.
THE MEANING
Amalek’s strength fails in the encounter: Joshua weakens Amalek and his people by the sword. The verse keeps the defeat physical and direct; the sword’s “mouth” gives the blade a body in the sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that an aggressor’s power cannot be brought low is undone here: Amalek is the force made weak.
THE ROOT
וַיַּחֲלֹשׁ
wayyaḥălōš
GROWS FROM
חלש
To be weak; to weaken or prostrate.
“wore down” in this verse is wayyaḥălōš. The verb wayyaḥălōš means “he weakened”: the sentence names Amalek’s loss of strength. The family also includes חָלָשׁ (ḥālāš, “weak, feeble”) and חֻלְשָׁה (ḥulšāh, “weakness”), joining the action to the condition it produces. The phrase לְפִי־חָרֶב (lefi ḥerev, “by the mouth of the sword”) gives the blade a mouth, making the violence concrete.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāš: Weak, feeble.
חָלָשׁ
The root’s adjective names the condition Joshua brings about in Amalek’s force.
ḥulšāh: Weakness, debility.
חֻלְשָׁה
This noun names the diminished strength carried in the verse’s verb.
THE PATTERN
In a crisis, strength is distributed: action holds when distinct people carry distinct parts of the struggle.
But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.They who built on the wall, and they who bore burdens, with those who lifted the load, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand gripped a weapon.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
How he met you on the road, and struck down the rear of you, all who lagged behind you, when you were spent and worn; and he had no awe of God.Deuteronomy names Amalek as the force that strikes the faint and weary; Exodus names Amalek as the force made weak. The reversal turns the exposure around without softening the violence in either verse.
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