What Does Judges 21:10 Mean?
And the assembly sent there twelve thousand men of strength, and commanded them, saying, Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the mouth of the sword, with the women and the little ones.
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 congregation sent thither twelve thousand men of the valiantest, and commanded them, saying, Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children.THE KEY
The verse begins with an assembly sending violence outward, making the collective command part of the act.
THE MEANING
The congregation sends twelve thousand men and orders them to attack Jabesh-gilead with the sword, explicitly naming women and children in the scope of the attack. The verse traces the violence from a collective decision to the people commanded to carry it out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A collective order can make violence seem ownerless; the verse names both the congregation that sends and the people commanded to strike.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלְחוּ
vayishlechu
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send out or send away; in some contexts, to release or let go.
Here the assembly sends men outward to kill; in Exodus, the same root appears in the command to release a people. At Siloam, the name means “Sent,” and the sent water becomes part of a restoration of sight. The root names directed movement; its object and purpose shape what that movement does.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send away; release; let go.
שַׁלַּח
In Exodus 9:1, this is the command behind “Let my people go.” The same root that sends armed men here can also describe releasing people from confinement.
Shiloach: Sent; the name of the pool called Siloam in John 9:7.
שִׁלֹחַ / Σιλωάμ
In John 9:7, washing in the pool called “Sent” is followed by the man’s restored sight. This branch shows the root’s movement serving restoration rather than violence.
וְהִכִּיתֶם
we-hikkitem
GROWS FROM
נכה
nakah
To strike, smite, or beat.
The root keeps the action bodily: to strike. Joined to the phrase “with the edge of the sword,” it leaves no distance between the command and physical harm.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: A blow, strike, or plague.
מַכָּה
The word can name a blow or a plague, as in Exodus 12:13. The branch carries the force of striking from an individual act to a calamity that reaches a people.
mukkēh: Struck or smitten.
מֻכֵּה
Isaiah 53:4 uses this form for one who is stricken. It keeps the person receiving the blow in view, alongside the one carrying out the strike.
THE PATTERN
When authority turns judgment into an order and others carry it out, violence becomes a chain of shared agency.
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.Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away.And they threw him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man called Saul.THE THREAD
Then the LORD said to Moses, Go in to Pharaoh, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews. Let my people go, that they may serve me.The Hebrew root שלח (shalach), meaning “send” or “release,” is behind “sent” here and “let my people go” in Exodus. In this verse it sends armed men toward others; in Exodus it releases a people from bondage, the root names the movement, while its purpose determines its force.
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