What Does Judges 16:10 Mean?
And Delilah said to Samson, Behold, you have mocked me and spoken what does not hold. Now tell me, I pray you, with what you may be bound.
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 Delilah said unto Samson, Behold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou mightest be bound.THE KEY
Her accusation of deception becomes the hinge that carries the conversation back to the means of binding him.
THE MEANING
A grievance can be voiced alongside a request for the exact knowledge needed to restrain someone. Here, the plea for an answer is attached to the method of binding, so the conversation keeps moving toward captivity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a wounded-sounding appeal is necessarily aimed at repair: this appeal returns to the means of restraint.
THE ROOT
תֵּאָסֵר
te'aser
GROWS FROM
אסר
ʾ-s-r
to bind, tie, or put under restraint
The verb presents Samson as the one who will be bound, while the question asks what will make that happen. The same root names both binding and the captive held by it, so the question reaches beyond a temporary restraint toward a state under another’s power.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsūr: bound, imprisoned
אָסוּר
This form names the condition that the question is seeking to create: being held under restraint.
ʾāsîr: prisoner, captive
אֲסִיר
This branch makes the consequence of binding visible as a person’s condition, not merely an action done to them.
THE PATTERN
Binding transfers control of a person’s movement to the one holding the restraint.
But the Philistines gripped him, and dug out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze chains. And he was grinding in the prison house.Then the commander of a thousand drew near, and seized him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and asked who he was, and what he had done.And straightway in the early morning the chief priests took counsel together with the elders and scribes and the whole council, and bound Jesus, and carried him away, and handed him over to Pilate.THE THREAD
The breath of the Lord LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the bowed ones; he has sent me to bind up the broken of heart, to proclaim flowing freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are chained.Isaiah uses the same root אסר (ʾ-s-r, bind) for those who are bound, then places their condition beside an opening of the prison. Judges 16:10 asks for the means of restraint; Isaiah reveals the other side of that root, where the bound are met with an opening toward freedom.
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