What Does Judges 10:15 Mean?
And the children of Israel said to the LORD, We have missed the mark; do to us whatever is good in your eyes; only snatch us out, we pray, this day.
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 children of Israel said unto the LORD, We have sinned: do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee; deliver us only, we pray thee, this day.THE KEY
The verse holds confession and rescue together: admitting the miss does not cancel the plea to be pulled out today.
THE MEANING
The reader can name what has gone wrong and still ask for help. The words hold surrender to the LORD’s judgment alongside an urgent plea for deliverance now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Failure does not make a plea for deliverance incoherent; naming it and asking for help can stand together.
THE ROOT
הַצִּילֵנוּ
hatsilenu
GROWS FROM
נצל
נצל (natsal) means to rescue or snatch away; it can also mean to remove or strip off.
“only snatch us out” in this verse is hatsilenu. Here, הַצִּילֵנוּ (hatsilenu) asks to be taken out of danger. The root gives the plea a concrete force: naming the failure does not close the path to rescue.
ALSO GROWS
hitsil: he rescued or delivered
הִצִּיל
This form from the same root shows deliverance as an act of taking someone out of danger.
wayyatsilem: and he delivered them
וַיַּצִּילֵם
Psalm 107:6 uses this form for the LORD’s response to a cry from distress, echoing the plea here.
חָטָאנוּ
chatanu
GROWS FROM
חטא
חטא (chata) means to miss, fail, or go wrong.
“We have missed the mark” in this verse is chatanu. The admission names a miss, not an identity. The same word family names both the missing and an offering associated with it, holding failure and its response in one root-family.
ALSO GROWS
chet: a missing, failure, or offense
חֵטְא
This noun makes clear that the confession names something gone wrong.
chattat: a missing; also an offering for the missing in sacrificial contexts
חַטָּאת
The word-family carries both the failure and a response associated with it.
THE PATTERN
A cry to the LORD can name distress plainly and appeal directly for deliverance.
Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.For everyone who calls upon the nature of the LORD will be delivered.THE THREAD
Snatch me, I pray you, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and strike me, and the mother with the children.Jacob’s plea uses the same root, נצל (natsal), in הַצִּילֵנִי (hatsileni), “deliver me.” In both verses, deliverance means being pulled out of a danger the speaker cannot overcome alone.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us