What Does Judges 21:11 Mean?
And this is what you shall do. You shall devote to destruction every male, and every woman who has known a male in lying with him.
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 this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.THE KEY
The Hebrew word behind “utterly destroy” marks people as placed under a ban, while “knowing” identifies women by sexual experience.
THE MEANING
The sentence states an order to kill every male and every woman identified by sexual experience. It makes sex and sexual history the boundary between those targeted for destruction and those treated differently.
THE ROOT
תַּחֲרִימוּ
taḥărîmû
GROWS FROM
חרם
ḥ-r-m
To ban or place under a ban; in this command, to devote to destruction.
“devote to destruction” in this verse is taḥărîmû. The verb behind “utterly destroy” belongs to the same root as חֵרֶם, a thing placed under a ban. That framing does not soften the violence: the sentence identifies human beings as the ones the command marks for destruction.
ALSO GROWS
ḥērem: A ban, or something placed under a ban.
חֵרֶם
It shows that the command carries the language of a declared ban, not merely a general call to defeat.
lehaḥărîm: To place under a ban or devote to destruction.
לְהַחֲרִים
This verbal branch makes clear what the order does to the people it names.
יֹדַעַת
yōdaʿat
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or recognize; here, to know in a sexual sense.
“has known” in this verse is yōdaʿat. The Hebrew literally describes a woman as “knowing the lying of a male”; ידע can mean “know,” and this phrase uses it for sexual intercourse. The category is defined by relational and sexual history, a detail the English euphemism leaves less visible.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or recognize; in some constructions, to have sexual relations.
יָדַע
Here the verb names sexual experience, so “knowing” is part of the verse’s dividing criterion.
daʿat: Knowledge or knowing.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root keeps the language of knowing visible beneath the English phrase “hath lain by man.”
THE PATTERN
A command or ruler can make collective killing operate through a declared category of people.
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 Herod, when he perceived that he had been mocked by the wise men, burned with rage, and sent forth and killed all the children who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had carefully learned from the wise men.THE THREAD
And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins who had not known a man in lying with any male, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.This repeats ידע (“know”) to describe women as virgins, exposing the sexual idiom behind “hath lain by man.” Beside this verse, and the later statement that the survivors receive these women as wives (21:14), the distinction separates women targeted for death from women taken for marriage.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us