What Does Judges 20:6 Mean?
And I took my concubine, and cut her into pieces, and sent her through all the borders of the inheritance of Israel, for they have done a scheme and a disgrace in Israel.
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 I took my concubine, and cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel: for they have committed lewdness and folly in Israel.THE KEY
The verse condemns their outrage through a body the speaker himself cuts apart and sends as evidence.
THE MEANING
You are made to hold two facts in the same sentence: they commit an outrage against her, and he takes her body, cuts it into pieces, and sends it throughout Israel. The accusation names their crime, while the speaker’s first-person verbs expose how he turns her mutilated body into the charge’s public vehicle. The verse leaves both acts in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that condemning another’s violence makes the speaker’s own treatment of the victim disappear.
THE ROOT
וָאֲנַתְּחֶהָ
va’anatteḥehā
GROWS FROM
נתח
n-t-ḥ
Cut into sections or pieces; dissect.
“cut her in pieces” in this verse is va’anatteḥehā. This is the language of dividing a body into portions, not merely injuring it. The same root appears in a verse where oxen are cut apart and their pieces sent throughout Israel, linking bodily division with a message meant to mobilize the people.
ALSO GROWS
lintāḥehā: The pieces into which an animal is divided, as in Leviticus 1:6.
לִנְתָחֶיהָ
The word makes the physical division concrete: the body is handled as separate portions.
waynatteḥēhū: The verb used when Saul cuts oxen apart in 1 Samuel 11:7.
וַיְנַתְּחֵהוּ
There, as here, the cut pieces are sent throughout Israel to carry a summons.
וָאֲשַׁלְּחֶהָ
va’ashalleḥehā
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send, dispatch, release, or stretch forth.
“sent” in this verse is va’ashalleḥehā. The root holds sending and release together, keeping the outward motion visible. Here the object is not a person being freed: the speaker sends her dismembered body through Israel as an accusation.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: The name of the waters or watercourse of Shiloah.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name carries the same outward movement of being sent forth; here what travels outward is the woman’s body.
shilluaḥ: Sending off or release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
The root can name release, but this verse makes the grim object of its sending unmistakable.
זִמָּה
zimmāh
GROWS FROM
זמם
z-m-m
Devise or intend; in this noun family, a wicked design or heinous deed.
“a scheme” in this verse is zimmāh. Alongside the older English shade of “lewdness,” zimmāh carries the sense of a heinous deed or wicked design, from a family associated with devising. Paired with “folly,” it names grave outrage without making the speaker’s own act disappear.
ALSO GROWS
zāmam: To devise or contrive.
זָמַם
Its place in the word family adds a sense of deliberate design to the accusation, without specifying every perpetrator’s motive.
mezimmāh: A plan or device, sometimes sinister.
מְזִמָּה
The shared root shows that zimmāh can carry more than the modern English sense of sexual impropriety.
THE PATTERN
A public charge does not make the accuser’s own conduct disappear.
And Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the LORD God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I snatched you out of the hand of Saul.Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not notice the beam in your own eye?Therefore you have no word to answer with, O human, whoever you are who judges others, for in whatever you judge in another you press the sentence down upon yourself, for you who judge practice the very same things.THE THREAD
And he took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them through all the borders of Israel by the hand of messengers, saying, Whoever does not come out after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. And the awe of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out as one man.Both verses pair נתח (n-t-ḥ, cut into pieces) with שלח (sh-l-ḥ, send), carrying divided remains throughout Israel. In 1 Samuel, oxen pieces announce a threat that mobilizes the tribes; here, the woman’s pieces carry the Levite’s accusation, turning the same physical sequence into a different summons.
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