What Does Judges 21:12 Mean?
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.
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 they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.THE KEY
Here, “known” means sexual intimacy: the young women are classified by their sexual history and brought to the camp, with no voice or choice recorded for them.
THE MEANING
The sentence identifies the young women by whether they have had sexual relations with a man, then records their movement to the camp at Shiloh. It gives no words from the women and records no consent; the action is told from the men’s viewpoint. The word translated “known” carries bodily intimacy here, not only thought or information.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that biblical “knowing” is only mental: the verse makes sexual intimacy explicit.
THE ROOT
יָדַע
yādaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or experience.
“had not known” in this verse is yādaʿ. This root spans recognition and lived experience; it does not mean sex by itself. Here, the phrase “by lying with any male” makes its bodily sense explicit, while the sentence records the women’s movement without recording their will.
ALSO GROWS
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This noun shows the root also covers knowing as comprehension, alongside the embodied intimacy specified in the verse.
hōdīaʿ: To make known, inform
הוֹדִיעַ
The causative form makes knowing something communicated or disclosed; the verse’s context instead makes it intimate and bodily.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses “know” for personal encounter, including sexual intimacy and mutual recognition, while surrounding actions reveal whether that encounter is mutual or coercive.
And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, the gotten one, and she said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.I am the good shepherd. I perceive my own, and my own perceive me.THE THREAD
And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came in to you this night? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.The same Hebrew root appears in both verses: Judges uses it for the women’s prior sexual experience, while Genesis 19:5 puts it in a violent demand. The connection makes the bodily sense unmistakable and sharpens the silence around the women’s own will in Judges.
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