What Does Judges 13:10 Mean?
And the woman hurried and ran, and told her husband, and said to him, Look, the man who came to me the other day has been seen by me.
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 woman made haste, and ran, and shewed her husband, and said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me, that came unto me the other day.THE KEY
The Hebrew for “appeared” comes from “see,” so the verse moves from what she perceives to what she makes known.
THE MEANING
The man she encountered before appears to her again, and she hurries to tell her husband. What she sees passes into speech and becomes something another person can receive.
THE ROOT
נִרְאָה
nirʾāh
GROWS FROM
ראה
r-ʾ-h
To see, look at, or perceive; in this form, to be seen or appear.
“has been seen by me” in this verse is nirʾāh. The verb beneath “appeared” is ראה, “to see,” and its form here can mean “be seen” or “appear.” The root ties the man’s appearing to the woman’s seeing: this is an encounter as she perceives it.
ALSO GROWS
raʾah: To see, look at, perceive
רָאָה
The verb “appeared” belongs to the same family as “see,” keeping the event tied to perception.
marʾeh: Sight, appearance, vision
מַרְאֶה
Judges 13:6 uses this same root for the man’s appearance, linking this encounter to the woman’s earlier description.
וַתַּגֵּד
vat-taggēd
GROWS FROM
נגד
n-g-d
To declare, tell, or make known.
“told” in this verse is vat-taggēd. Though KJV renders it “showed,” the Hebrew verb carries the sense of telling or making known. Her perception becomes a report her husband can receive.
ALSO GROWS
higgīd: Told, declared, reported
הִגִּיד
This is the same verb form used for her telling her husband about the encounter.
maggīd: One who tells or declares
מַגִּיד
The same root can name a teller, showing how the encounter moves outward through a spoken report.
THE PATTERN
What one perceives or encounters becomes testimony another person can hear.
Come and hear, all you who stand in awe of God, and I will recount what he has done for my living soul.And they turned back from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest.He first found his own brother Simon, and said to him, We have found the Anointed One.THE THREAD
And she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, You are El Roi, the God who sees me. For she said, Have I also here looked after the one who sees me?Both passages draw on ראה: Judges describes the man as appearing to the woman, while Genesis holds together God who sees and Hagar’s own seeing. The shared root opens appearance into perception and being seen, rather than a bare arrival.
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