What Does Judges 20:8 Mean?
And all the people rose as one man, saying, None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will bend into his house.
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 all the people arose as one man, saying, We will not any of us go to his tent, neither will we any of us turn into his house.THE KEY
The crowd becomes “one man” as each person refuses to retreat into the privacy of his own tent or house.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a people standing as one and each person refusing to withdraw. That shared resolve becomes a decision for war in the surrounding passage, so this unity carries the force and cost of violence as well as solidarity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Unity does not make each person disappear into a faceless crowd: the repeated “each man” keeps every individual visible within the collective decision.
THE ROOT
אֶחָד
echad
GROWS FROM
אחד
One; united as a single whole.
The Hebrew says כְּאִישׁ אֶחָד (ke’ish echad, “as one man”), then repeats אִישׁ (ish, “each man”) in both refusals. The one body is made of distinct people, each refusing to withdraw into private shelter.
ALSO GROWS
echad: One; a single whole.
אֶחָד
The people stand together as one, turning a crowd into a single acting body.
achdut: Unity; oneness.
אַחְדוּת
This branch makes explicit the shared state expressed by “as one man.”
iḥud: Unification; joining into one.
אִחוּד
The verse shows unification taking shape through a common refusal to disperse.
THE PATTERN
A shared resolve gathers many individuals into one acting body and interrupts their return to private life.
And the LORD said, Look, they are one people, and they have all one lip; and this is what they begin to do. And now nothing they have devised to do will be walled off from them.So all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, bound together as one man.And the multitude of those who trusted were of one heart and one living soul. Not one of them said that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared all things in common.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, Look, they are one people, and they have all one lip; and this is what they begin to do. And now nothing they have devised to do will be walled off from them.Both verses call a people אֶחָד (echad, “one”), showing how unity magnifies what a group can do. Oneness itself does not determine the aim; it gives greater force to the purpose the group shares.
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