What Does Judges 21:4 Mean?
And it came to be on the next day, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and drew near with ascending offerings and offerings of wholeness.
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 it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early, and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.THE KEY
One offering rises; the other carries the root of wholeness, so the altar holds ascent and restoration together.
THE MEANING
You encounter a scene that moves from rising at daybreak to building a place of offering. What ascends is brought alongside an offering whose name carries wholeness, giving that wholeness a shared, tangible form.
THE ROOT
שְׁלָמִים
shelāmîm
GROWS FROM
שלם
š-l-m
To be complete or whole; to make whole.
“offerings of wholeness” in this verse is shelāmîm. The word translated “peace offerings” belongs to the same family as wholeness and completeness. The verse places that root at the altar, so wholeness appears as something given concrete form in shared life.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
This familiar branch shows that the offering’s name carries more than a feeling of calm; it is linked to a state of wholeness.
shalem: Whole, intact, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the root’s sense of completeness audible within the name of the offering.
עֹלוֹת
ʿōlōt
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
To rise, ascend, or go up.
“ascending offerings” in this verse is ʿōlōt. The Hebrew name for a burnt offering, עֹלָה (ʿōlāh), comes from the verb for rising. Beside the shelamim, the verse holds two movements together: what ascends and what is named for wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōlāh: A burnt offering; literally, that which ascends.
עֹלָה
The offering’s name preserves the upward movement described by its root.
ʿăliyyāh: Ascent or going up.
עֲלִיָּה
This related word makes the shared image of rising explicit, illuminating the motion carried by עֹלוֹת (ʿōlōt).
THE PATTERN
Wholeness takes visible form through offerings that rise and through relationships brought back into unity.
If his drawing near is a wholeness offering from the herd, male or female, he brings it near whole before the LORD.For he is our wholeness, the one who made both one and loosed the middle wall of the fence.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.THE THREAD
If his drawing near is a wholeness offering from the herd, male or female, he brings it near whole before the LORD.Leviticus names the same kind of offering with the same Hebrew root behind “peace offerings.” That root carries wholeness and completeness, giving the word in Judges the sense of wholeness brought into a concrete offering.
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