What Does Judges 20:35 Mean?
And the LORD struck Benjamin before Israel, and the children of Israel brought down among the Benjamites that day twenty-five thousand and one hundred men; all these grasped the sword.
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 LORD smote Benjamin before Israel: and the children of Israel destroyed of the Benjamites that day twenty and five thousand and an hundred men: all these drew the sword.THE KEY
The sentence gives the defeat two agents at once: the LORD smites Benjamin, and Israel destroys 25,100 men with swords.
THE MEANING
This verse places divine judgment and human killing in one frame: the LORD smites Benjamin, while Israel destroys 25,100 men, all of them sword-bearers. The exact number keeps the defeat attached to bodies and weapons rather than leaving it an abstract victory.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a victory attributed to the LORD must be bloodless: the verse names 25,100 destroyed men and the swords they draw.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגֹּף
vayyiggoph
GROWS FROM
נגף
strike, smite, defeat
English can make “smote” sound like a single blow, but this root also forms מַגֵּפָה (maggēphāh, “plague, blow, or defeat”) and נִגַּף (niggaph, “struck, defeated”). The language holds the strike and the resulting defeat together; here the LORD is named as the one who strikes while Israel’s destruction remains visible.
ALSO GROWS
maggēphāh: plague, blow, defeat
מַגֵּפָה
The same root names a collective blow as a plague or defeat, showing that the strike can register across a people, not only as one impact.
niggaph: struck, defeated
נִגַּף
This passive form names what the target becomes after the blow, linking the act of striking directly to the state of defeat.
וַיַּשְׁחִיתוּ
vayyashchitu
GROWS FROM
שחת
ruin, corrupt, destroy
“brought down” in this verse is vayyashchitu. This root moves between ruin, corruption, and destruction, and it can name the destroyer as well as the damaged state. The verse gives that ruin human actors, the children of Israel, and a concrete count of men.
ALSO GROWS
mashḥīt: destroyer, one who destroys
מַשְׁחִית
This form names an agent of ruin, echoing the verse’s explicit naming of the people who destroy.
nishḥāt: ruined, corrupted
נִשְׁחָת
This passive form names the damaged state as well as the destructive act, extending the root’s sense beyond a faceless outcome.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names divine judgment through concrete violence, keeping the striking agent and the bodily cost in view.
For the LORD will cross through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will leap over the opening, and will not give the ruiner leave to come into your houses to strike you.Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.And at once the messenger of the LORD struck him, because he did not give God the weight, and he was eaten by worms and breathed out his last.THE THREAD
Then the men of Judah raised a shout, and as the men of Judah shouted, it came to pass that God struck down Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.The Hebrew verb וַיִּגֹּף (vayyiggoph, “smote”) shares its root with the word translated “smote” here, and again God is named as the striker with one people defeated before another. The repeated wording makes the LORD’s smiting of Benjamin part of a recurring scriptural expression for defeat, while this verse gives its human death toll in exact numbers.
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