What Does Judges 14:8 Mean?
After some days he turned back to take her, and he turned aside to see the fallen body of the lion. And behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in its body.
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 after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for the lion’s carcass is formed from “fall,” so the honey is found inside what has fallen.
THE MEANING
The scene holds death and sweetness in the same place: the lion’s fallen body contains bees and honey. The carcass remains a carcass, yet it is also where the sweetness is found. The verse lets you see that what appears to be only an end can hold something nourishing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that what has fallen can hold nothing but decay: here, bees and honey are inside the lion’s carcass.
THE ROOT
מַפֶּלֶת
mappéleth
GROWS FROM
נפל
naphal
to fall
“fallen body” in this verse is mappéleth. The word מַפֶּלֶת (mappéleth, a fall or fallen thing) comes from נָפַל (naphal, to fall). English “carcase” names the remains; the Hebrew also carries the image of a fall, so the sweetness is found within what has fallen.
ALSO GROWS
naphal: to fall
נָפַל
This verb is the root seed behind the word translated “carcase,” bringing the sense of falling into the image of the dead lion.
mappālāh: a downfall or ruin
מַפָּלָה
This related noun carries the root’s sense of a fall into a state of ruin, echoing the lion’s fallen state.
THE PATTERN
Nourishment can appear in unlikely places, including spaces marked by barrenness or danger.
He sets him riding on the heights of the earth, and he eats the sprouting of the fields; he makes him suckle honey from the crag, and oil from the flint rock.But Jonathan did not hear when his father bound the people with the oath, so he stretched out the tip of the rod that was in his hand, and immersed it in the honeycomb, and returned his hand to his mouth, and his eyes were lit.And John himself wore a garment of camel's hair and a belt of hide about his loins; his food was locusts and wild honey.THE THREAD
And he said to them, Out of the eater came food, and out of the strong came sweetness. And they could not tell the riddle in three days.The riddle gives words to the image in this verse: the eater becomes a source of food, and the strong one a source of sweetness. It reveals the lion and honey as one deliberate paradox.
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