What Does Judges 21:14 Mean?
And Benjamin returned at that time, and they gave them the wives whom they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-gilead, and they did not find so much for them.
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 Benjamin came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-gilead: and yet so they sufficed them not.THE KEY
A life can be spared and still be handed over: the women survive, while their consent goes unspoken.
THE MEANING
Other people decide the women’s marriages and give them to Benjamin to address a shortage. Their survival is explicit; their consent is not, and even this arrangement does not provide enough wives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being spared is the same as being restored: the women live, yet others decide what happens to them.
THE ROOT
וַיִּתְּנוּ
vayittĕnū
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, put, or set in place.
“gave” in this verse is vayittĕnū. The verb makes the women the objects of a transfer: others give them as wives. Its range includes both handing over and placing, revealing how this attempted solution depends on decisions made over the women rather than by them.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, put, or set.
נָתַן
This is the verb’s root form; it names the act by which the women are handed to Benjamin.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root carries the language of something bestowed, sharpening the verse’s unsettling grammar of giving people to others.
חִיּוּ
chiyyu
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, preserve life, or cause to live.
This root marks continued life, but it does not itself promise freedom or choice. The verse can say the women are kept alive while also showing that survival alone does not tell us what happens to their agency.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living or alive.
חַי
The women are kept in this state of being alive, but the word does not say they are free.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
The same root names life itself; the verse exposes the gap between life continuing and a person choosing what comes next.
THE PATTERN
Power can preserve a life while still controlling or using the person who lives.
But the midwives stood in awe of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but kept the boys alive.And they had taken the women captive who were in it, and they did not kill any, great or small, but drove them off and went on their way.And cinnamon, and fragrances, and incense, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and bodies, and living souls of humankind.THE THREAD
But the midwives stood in awe of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but kept the boys alive.The same Hebrew root חיה (chayah), meaning to live or preserve life, appears in both verses as “saved alive.” In Exodus the midwives preserve children’s lives against a ruler’s command; here women are kept alive, but others decide what happens to them afterward.
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