What Does Judges 1:6 Mean?
But Adoni-bezek fled, and they pursued him, and seized him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.
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 Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes.THE KEY
The mutilation is a calculated subtraction of grasp and footing, turning defeat into a loss of bodily agency.
THE MEANING
This verse holds pursuit ending in deliberate bodily injury. The loss of thumbs impairs grasp, while the loss of great toes compromises footing: domination becomes visible as diminished bodily capacity. The next verse names the symmetry, as Adoni-bezek says he inflicted the same injury on other kings.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that power places someone beyond the reach of the violence they impose.
THE ROOT
וַיְקַצְּצוּ
vayqats'tsu
GROWS FROM
קצץ
To cut off, clip, or lop away.
“cut off” in this verse is vayqats'tsu. This root names physical severing, not a figurative loss. Here, what is removed is part of the body, and the injury takes away capacities for grasping and balance.
ALSO GROWS
vayqats'tsu: They cut off.
וַיְקַצְּצוּ
This is the form used in the verse, naming the act as direct bodily removal.
mequtsatsim: Cut off.
מְקֻצָּצִים
The same root describes the kings’ severed thumbs and toes in the next verse, repeating the injury in the king’s account of what he did.
וַיִּרְדְּפוּ
vayirdefu
GROWS FROM
רדף
To pursue, chase, or persecute.
“pursued” in this verse is vayirdefu. The Hebrew root can name both a chase and persecution, so pursuit here carries the force of a hunt that ends in harm. English can make the chase sound like a neutral step before the injury; the root keeps the pressure of pursuit in view.
ALSO GROWS
rodef: Pursuer; persecutor.
רֹדֵף
This active form shows that the one who pursues can also be the one who persecutes.
redifah: Pursuit; persecution.
רְדִיפָה
This noun holds chasing and persecution together, echoing the movement from pursuit to bodily violence in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Violence can return upon the one who sets it in motion, making the perpetrator bear a likeness of his own act.
And Adoni-bezek said, Seventy kings, with their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
And Adoni-bezek said, Seventy kings, with their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.The Hebrew root קצץ (qatsats), “cut off,” appears in both verses: here as the act done to him, and in verse 7 as the injury he says he inflicted on seventy kings. The repeated root makes the bodily harm in this verse the visible echo of his own account.
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