What Does Genesis 34:29 Mean?
And all their strength, and all their little ones, and their wives they took captive, and plundered even all that was in the house.
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 all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives took they captive, and spoiled even all that was in the house.THE KEY
The verse makes conquest total: people are carried off as captives while the household and everything sustaining it are stripped away.
THE MEANING
When violence expands into conquest, it reaches beyond those killed: wives and children are carried off, wealth is seized, and the home is stripped. The verse places people and household goods in one sweep, naming how total the seizure is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the claim that retaliation can stay confined to the guilty: wives, children, and everything in the house are swept into the seizure.
THE ROOT
שָׁבוּ
shavu
GROWS FROM
שבה
Take captive, lead away as a captive.
“took captive” in this verse is shavu. The Hebrew verb names people being carried under another’s power. Its related words keep captivity visible as a condition imposed on people: here, the wives and children are among those seized.
ALSO GROWS
shevi: captivity; captives
שְׁבִי
This noun names the state created by the act of taking captive.
shavuy: a person held captive
שָׁבוּי
This form names the person living under a captor’s control.
וַיָּבֹזּוּ
vayavozzu
GROWS FROM
בזז
Plunder, seize as spoil.
“plundered” in this verse is vayavozzu. The verb rendered “spoiled” names the forceful stripping of a place. Its related noun forms name what that act produces as spoil, while the verse spells out the reach of the plunder as everything in the house.
ALSO GROWS
bizzah: plunder; spoil
בִּזָּה
This noun names what is taken through the plundering described here.
baz: booty; spoil
בַּז
This related word makes the seized goods visible as the result of the act.
חֵילָם
cheilam
GROWS FROM
חיל
Strength, force, capacity; also resources or wealth.
The word for wealth carries the wider sense of strength and capacity. The seizure reaches beyond objects: it strips the household of resources and means as well as taking people away.
ALSO GROWS
chayil: strength; force; resources
חַיִל
Its range links the household’s wealth with the capacity that sustains it.
eshet chayil: a woman of strength or ability
אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל
The same word can describe personal strength, revealing the wider force carried by the word translated “wealth.”
THE PATTERN
Where power treats a people as spoil, it takes households and goods together and reduces human lives to objects of seizure.
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.But this is a people plundered and stripped. All of them are caught in snares and in pits, and hidden in prison houses. They are plunder, and none snatches them back. They are spoil, and none says, Give it back.And cinnamon, and fragrances, and incense, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and bodies, and living souls of humankind.THE THREAD
The sons of Jacob came upon the pierced ones, and plundered the city, because they had soiled their sister.The same Hebrew root בָּזַז (bazaz, to plunder) appears in both verses. Verse 27 names the plundering after the killing; verse 29 shows its reach in the captives and everything taken from the homes.
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