What Does Judges 10:16 Mean?
And they turned aside the foreign gods from among them, and served the LORD, and his living soul was cut short over the toil of Israel.
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 they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the LORD: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel.THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures God’s living soul shortened by Israel’s toil, making their constriction something he feels within himself.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two movements together: what divides the people is put away, and they serve the LORD. Their toil reaches God’s own living soul, which the Hebrew describes as shortened under their misery.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that suffering leaves God untouched: the verse depicts Israel’s toil pressing upon his own living soul.
THE ROOT
וַתִּקְצַר
vattiqtsar
GROWS FROM
קצר
qatsar
To be short or become shortened; in a related use, to reap or cut grain.
“cut short” in this verse is vattiqtsar. The phrase is וַתִּקְצַר נַפְשׁוֹ (vattiqtsar nafsho, his living soul became shortened): the English “grieved” carries an image of constriction. נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, living soul) names what is affected, so Israel’s toil is portrayed as pressing into God’s own life.
ALSO GROWS
miqqotser: Shortness
מִקֹּצֶר
Exodus 6:9 uses this form with רוּחַ (ruach, breath) in the phrase KJV renders “anguish of spirit”; there, bondage leaves Israel short of breath, while here Israel’s toil shortens God’s living soul.
qatsir: Harvest or reaping
קָצִיר
This word shares the root’s cutting sense: grain is cut down at harvest. That branch gives the shortening image a concrete edge without reducing the verse’s grief to a figure of speech.
THE PATTERN
Human distress does not remain outside God’s attention; it presses into divine compassion.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.In all their narrow place he was narrowed, and the messenger of his face brought them out. In his love and in his pity he bought them back. He lifted them and carried them all the days of the ages.But seeing the crowds, his insides moved for them, because they were loosened and thrown down, like sheep having no shepherd.THE THREAD
And Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not hear and respond to Moses, from shortness of breath and from hard service.Exodus uses מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ (miqqotser ruach, shortness of breath) for Israel’s distress under bondage; Judges uses the same root, קצר (qatsar, become short), for God’s response to their toil. The shared word makes their constriction and his inward grief echo each other.
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