What Does Judges 21:16 Mean?

Then the elders of the assembly said, What shall we do for wives for those who remain, since the women have been destroyed from Benjamin?

Judges 21:16 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?

THE KEY

After annihilation, the elders’ question measures the community’s future through the surviving men’s need for wives.

THE MEANING

You hear the assembly count the men as those left over and name women as destroyed from Benjamin. Its first voiced question is how to find wives for the survivors; women appear as the missing condition of the men’s future, without a voice of their own. The verse keeps the annihilation and the terms of the proposed repair visible together.

THE ROOT

נִשְׁמְדָה

nishmedah

GROWS FROM

שׁמד

sh-m-d

To annihilate or wipe out; in this form, to be annihilated.

“destroyed” in this verse is nishmedah. The root’s active branches name destruction and its agent, while this verse’s passive form leaves the agent outside the sentence. The clause names what happens to the women before the elders ask what to do for the men who remain.

ALSO GROWS

hishmid: To destroy or annihilate

הִשְׁמִיד

This active form names the act whose result appears here in the passive.

mashmid: Destroyer; one who annihilates

מַשְׁמִיד

This branch names an agent, though the verse itself does not identify one.

לַנּוֹתָרִים

lan-notarim

GROWS FROM

יתר

y-t-r

To remain, be left over, or be in excess.

“remain” in this verse is lan-notarim. The men are named through what remains after loss; this is a word for being left over, not for wholeness. Beside the annihilation of women, the root makes the verse’s survivor count audible.

ALSO GROWS

yether: Remainder, rest, or surplus

יֶתֶר

This noun shows how the root can name what is left after something is removed.

yoter: More or additional

יוֹתֵר

This branch carries the root’s sense of what remains beyond a measure.

הָעֵדָה

ha’edah

GROWS FROM

יעד

y-ʿ-d

To appoint, designate, or meet at an appointed gathering.

“assembly” in this verse is ha’edah. The elders speak as an assembled body, so the response to the violence is being worked out collectively. The word’s family links the congregation with appointed meetings, while the women themselves remain unheard in this verse.

ALSO GROWS

ya’ad: To appoint, designate, or arrange a meeting

יָעַד

This verb connects the assembly to the act of gathering by appointment.

mo’ed: An appointed time, meeting, or place

מוֹעֵד

This branch shows the root’s connection to a designated gathering.

THE PATTERN

Communal and political power repeatedly makes vulnerable people bear the cost of preserving its order.

Behold, here is my daughter, a virgin, and his concubine; I will bring them out now, and bend them low, and do with them what is good in your eyes. But to this man do not do this vile thing.

Judges 19:24 · SDVA man offers women to an armed crowd to protect a male guest, making their bodies the price of his safety.

So I turn back, and I see all the pressings that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the pressed, and no one to comfort them. And strength comes from the hand of their pressers, and no one to comfort them.

Ecclesiastes 4:1 · SDVThe oppressed bear the cost while power rests with their oppressors and no comforter appears.

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.

Matthew 2:16 · SDVA ruler’s attempt to secure himself turns children into targets and makes vulnerable bodies bear his fear.

THE THREAD

Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the dawn rose.

Genesis 32:24 · SDV

“Left” in Genesis shares the root ⁨יתר⁩ (yathar, remain or be left over) with “them that remain” here. Genesis names one person left alone; Judges uses the same root for the surviving men as a group, making the survivor count audible at the root level.

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