What Does Joshua 10:10 Mean?
And the LORD set them tumbling before Israel, and struck them down at Gibeon with a great blow, and pursued them along the way that climbs to Beth-horon, and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah.
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 the LORD discomfited them before Israel, and slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon, and chased them along the way that goeth up to Beth-horon, and smote them to Azekah, and unto Makkedah.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb makes the battle begin with a collapse of order, the LORD throws the opposing force into tumult before the slaughter and pursuit unfold.
THE MEANING
You encounter divine victory here in an unsoftened form: the LORD disorients one force, and the verse names a great slaughter, a chase, and repeated blows. The violence remains beside the attribution to God; the sentence does not make this victory bloodless or abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a victory attributed to God is necessarily gentle or bloodless; here the words are discomfiture, slaughter, pursuit, and blows.
THE ROOT
וַיְהֻמֵּם
wayəhummēm
GROWS FROM
ה־מ־ם
h-m-m
To make tumult or throw into confusion; to confound or discomfit.
“set them tumbling” in this verse is wayəhummēm. Here “discomfited” carries the force of a force thrown into tumult, its order broken before the verse names slaughter and pursuit. The root joins confusion to the visible rout without softening the violence.
ALSO GROWS
hāmam: To make tumult, confuse, or discomfit.
הָמַם
This is the root verb behind the form in Joshua; it shows that the action begins by throwing the opposing force into disorder.
mehûmāh: Tumult, confusion, or panic.
מְהוּמָה
This noun from the same root names the disorder implicit in the verb, connecting the enemy’s confusion with the rout that follows.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can portray divine victory through the disruption and physical defeat of hostile power, leaving the violence explicit.
And it was, in the morning watch, that the LORD looked down upon the camp of the Egyptians in the pillar of fire and of cloud, and threw the camp into uproar.And the LORD threw Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his camp, into an uproar by the mouth of the sword before Barak. And Sisera came down from the chariot and fled on his feet.And from his mouth goes out a sharp sword, so that with it he strikes the nations, and he shepherds them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the seething and swelling anger of God the all-ruling.THE THREAD
And the LORD threw Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his camp, into an uproar by the mouth of the sword before Barak. And Sisera came down from the chariot and fled on his feet.Judges uses the same Hebrew root ה־מ־ם (h-m-m) behind “discomfited” to describe Sisera and his host before their flight. The shared root makes the enemy’s confusion a recognizable part of this recurring language of violent defeat.
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