What Does Judges 20:12 Mean?
And the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What harm is this that is done among you?
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 tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, What wickedness is this that is done among you?THE KEY
The same Hebrew word appears for Israel’s “tribes” and Benjamin’s “tribe,” carrying the question through a shared kinship structure.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you wherever wrongdoing is held inside a community: it names the evil as “among you” and makes the community part of the inquiry. The question remains open, carrying the accusation without yet giving an answer or remedy.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing becomes beyond question simply because it happens inside a community.
THE ROOT
הָרָעָה
hā-rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רעע
To be bad or evil; its word family can also name harm, distress, or calamity.
“Wickedness” can sound like a fixed moral label, while hā-rāʿāh belongs to a word family that also names harm and distress. The question points to evil that has arisen among a people and to the damage carried with it.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad; evil.
רַע
This form shares the root with the noun for wickedness, linking the quality of evil with the evil named in the question.
rāʿāh: Evil; harm, distress, or calamity.
רָעָה
The noun’s broader range lets the accusation carry both moral wrong and the harm it brings.
וַיִּשְׁלְחוּ
vayyishleḥū
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send, send forth, release, or let go.
The men are sent forth through the whole Benjaminite community, so the inquiry travels into the place where the wrong is said to have occurred. The root can also carry the sense of release or sending away, though here it marks the dispatch of an inquiry.
ALSO GROWS
shilluaḥ: Sending away; dismissal or release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
It shows the root’s reach from sending outward to letting go.
Shiloaḥ: Shiloah, associated with sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name preserves the same send-root in the waters of Shiloah, later named Siloam in John 9:7.
שִׁבְטֵי
shivṭê
GROWS FROM
שבט
A staff or rod; also a tribe or clan.
“tribes / tribe” in this verse is shivṭê. Both phrases use the same Hebrew form, shivṭê: “the tribes of Israel” and “all the tribe of Benjamin.” The English shifts between plural and singular, while the Hebrew keeps both groups within the same kinship language.
ALSO GROWS
sheveṭ: Staff, rod, or scepter.
שֵׁבֶט
This is another sense of the same Hebrew word, linking the community-name with an image of a staff or rod.
sheveṭ: Tribe or clan.
שֵׁבֶט
The word names both the sending tribes and the Benjaminite groups receiving their inquiry.
THE PATTERN
Wrong inside a community becomes visible and answerable when it is brought into open inquiry.
Then you shall search it out, and dig, and ask well; and, behold, if it is truth, and the thing set firm, that such abomination is done among you;It is heard commonly that there is the trade of bodies among you, and such trade as is not even named among the nations, that one should hold his father's wife.And share nothing in common with the barren works of darkness, but rather expose them.THE THREAD
And the LORD saw that the harm of humankind was great in the earth, and that every shaping of the thoughts of his heart was only harm all the day.Judges asks what hā-rāʿāh has arisen among Benjamin; Genesis uses the same Hebrew word family for human wickedness. The shared root opens the local question onto evil as both moral wrong and the harm it carries.
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