What Does Judges 1:25 Mean?
And when he showed them the entrance to the city, they struck the city with the mouth of the sword, but they sent away the man and all his family.
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 when he shewed them the entrance into the city, they smote the city with the edge of the sword; but they let go the man and all his family.THE KEY
Here, “let go” means “send out”: one household is released through movement away, even as the city is destroyed.
THE MEANING
The verse holds destruction and release in the same frame: the city is struck by the sword, while the man who reveals its entrance and his whole family are sent away. Their release does not undo or soften the violence done to the city. It names exactly who is sent out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that violence necessarily erases every distinction between those inside a city; the verse sets the city’s destruction beside one household’s release.
THE ROOT
שִׁלְּחוּ
shilleḥu
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send, send forth, or release; to move someone outward or away.
English “let go” can sound like simply loosening a grip; this verb also means sending someone out. The man and his household are released by being sent away while the city is destroyed, so the verse makes release concrete and sharply bounded.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: To send, send forth, release.
שָׁלַח
This is the same root behind the command “Let my people go” in Exodus 5:1.
shilluaḥ: Sending away; dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes release an outward movement away from a hold, like the household’s departure here.
חֶרֶב
cherev
GROWS FROM
חרב
charav
To become desolate or be laid waste; these consonants also form the word for sword here.
The phrase rendered “edge of the sword” is literally “mouth of the sword” (לְפִי־חָרֶב, lefi cherev, by the mouth of a sword). The sword’s word-family also carries desolation, bringing the weapon and the ruin it leaves close together in the Hebrew.
ALSO GROWS
charav: To become desolate; to be laid waste.
חָרַב
The city is struck by a sword whose consonants also name the desolation that follows.
ḥarēv: Dry, desolate, ruined.
חָרֵב
This branch carries desolation as a condition, echoing the city’s destruction.
THE PATTERN
Release moves a held person out of another’s power.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.For if a man finds his enemy, will he send him away in good? Let the LORD repay you with good for what you have done to me this day.Then the lord of that servant was stirred in his inward parts, and let him go, and released the debt.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.Judges uses the root שלח (shalach, send or release) for the man and his household sent away; Exodus 5:1 uses the same root in “Let my people go.” Both make release a literal sending out, from a city being struck in Judges, and from a ruler’s hold in Exodus.
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