What Does Judges 21:15 Mean?
And the people grieved for Benjamin, because the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
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 people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.THE KEY
The people’s grief for Benjamin comes from a Hebrew root that also names consolation, even as the verse leaves Israel’s breach in view.
THE MEANING
Compassion for Benjamin exists alongside the recognition that a breach has opened in Israel’s tribes. The verse holds grief and communal fracture in the same frame; neither erases the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Seeing a breach in the community does not make compassion for Benjamin false or misplaced.
THE ROOT
נִחָם
niḥam
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
Console or comfort; in the Niphal form, feel regret or relent.
“grieved” in this verse is niḥam. The Hebrew verb translated “repented them” is a Niphal form of נחם, a root also used for consolation. The people’s grief for Benjamin is linguistically close to comfort, while their compassion sits beside the breach in Israel’s tribes.
ALSO GROWS
niḥam: Feel regret, be sorry, or relent.
נִחַם
This is the form used here: the people are moved for Benjamin.
niḥem: Comfort or console.
נִחֵם
This form shows the root’s connection between being moved by grief and giving comfort.
menaḥem: Comforter.
מְנַחֵם
The related noun makes the root’s consoling sense visible.
פֶּרֶץ
perets
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
Break through or burst forth.
“had made a breach” in this verse is perets. This word carries the force of a break-through, not an abstract loss: Israel’s tribal structure is described as torn open. The root holds the act of breaking through and the resulting breach within one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
parats: Break through or burst out.
פָּרַץ
The verb shows the force behind the breach named in the verse.
perets: Breach or rupture.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun names the opening left when a boundary is broken.
THE PATTERN
Breach language makes a boundary breaking visible, whether it appears as an opening, a rupture, or work of rebuilding.
And it came to be, as he drew back his hand, and behold, his brother came out, and she said, How have you broken through? Let this breach be upon you. Therefore his name was called Pharez, the breach.Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.For he is our wholeness, the one who made both one and loosed the middle wall of the fence.THE THREAD
Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word for the breach in Judges, but places it within a picture of building, raising foundations, and restoring paths. The connection keeps the fracture in view while showing that a breach can become the very thing a restorer is named to address.
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