What Does Judges 20:16 Mean?
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones to the width of a hair, and never miss the mark.
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
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for a shot that does not miss shares its root with the Bible’s word for missing.
THE MEANING
You are looking at violence made exact: a stone travels within a hair’s breadth of its mark, and not one misses. Here, a tiny deviation carries enormous consequence because precision decides whether the stone strikes.
THE ROOT
יַחֲטִא
yaḥăṭi
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, to fail to reach the mark.
“never miss the mark” in this verse is yaḥăṭi. The English “miss” keeps the literal image; Hebrew חטא also names missing and wrongdoing. The verse’s flawless aim and the Bible’s language of human failure grow from one seed: a deviation from the mark.
ALSO GROWS
ḥēṭʾ: Missing, failure, wrongdoing.
חֵטְא
The same root extends from a stone’s flight to human failure, giving “miss” a wider scriptural resonance.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; also the ritual offering associated with sin.
חַטָּאת
This branch keeps the root’s language of missing present even where English uses a different word.
THE PATTERN
Aimed movement is measured by whether it reaches its mark.
And David stretched out his hand into his bag, and took from it a stone, and slung it, and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.So I run, not as one running without sight; so I box, not as one who beats the air.I pursue toward the mark, for the prize of the calling of God from above, in Jesus the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Tremble, and do not miss the mark. Say in your heart, upon your bed, and hush. Selah.Judges uses חטא where the stone does not miss; Psalm 4 uses the same root in “sin not.” The shared word family binds physical accuracy to the wider image of missing the mark in a person’s life.
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