What Does Judges 20:4 Mean?
And the Levite, the husband of the woman who was struck down, answered and said, I came into Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.
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 Levite, the husband of the woman that was slain, answered and said, I came into Gibeah that belongeth to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to lodge.THE KEY
The root beneath “slain” is also used in the prohibition of murder, so this testimony begins by naming the act, not merely its aftermath.
THE MEANING
You hear the Levite begin his account by naming a murdered woman, then describing their arrival for a night’s lodging. The ordinary purpose of the trip sits beside a word that carries the force of murder, keeping the violence present as the account begins.
THE ROOT
נִרְצָחָה
nirṣāḥāh
GROWS FROM
רצח
r-ṣ-ḥ
To murder or slay.
“struck down” in this verse is nirṣāḥāh. The root in “slain” is the same one used in the commandment often rendered “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). It names the violence itself, so the woman is not only absent from the account; the word names what was done to her.
ALSO GROWS
rāṣaḥ: To murder or slay.
רָצַח
This is the verb behind the description of the woman, naming the act rather than only its result.
rōṣēaḥ: A murderer or killer.
רֹצֵחַ
This branch names the one who commits the act, showing how the same root can name both the violence and its agent.
הַלֵּוִי
ha-Levi
GROWS FROM
לוה
l-w-h
To join or attach.
The title “Levite” carries a joining-root, while the verse identifies the woman through her relation to him and then names the violence done to her. That joining-word sits beside a rupture the sentence does not soften.
ALSO GROWS
lāwâ: To join or attach.
לָוָה
This verbal branch is linked to the name Levi in Genesis 29:34, where joining is the stated reason for the name.
nilwâ: Joined or attached.
נִלְוָה
This form shows the root describing someone who becomes joined to another, echoing the relational sense carried by the Levite’s title.
THE PATTERN
Harm moves from concealment into shared hearing when it is spoken before others.
Whoever strikes a living soul, the crusher shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses; but one witness shall not answer against any person to make him die.One witness shall not rise up against a man for any crookedness, or for any falling short, in it he misses the mark; upon the mouth of two witnesses, or upon the mouth of three witnesses, the word shall stand.When the woman saw that she had not stayed hidden, she came trembling and fell down before him, and before all the people she told him why she had touched him, and how she had been healed at once.THE THREAD
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Now this time my husband will cling to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi, Joined.Genesis makes the name’s connection to joining explicit: Levi is named because his mother says her husband will be joined to her. Here, the same root labels the speaker beside the woman whose murder he recounts, sharpening the relationship the verse preserves without naming her.
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