What Does Judges 21:6 Mean?
And the children of Israel grieved for Benjamin their brother, and said, One tribe is cut off from Israel this day.
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 children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.THE KEY
The word translated “repented” carries regret and consolation in the same root, so Israel’s grief names the rupture without repairing it.
THE MEANING
You can grieve a loss and still be inside the consequences that made it possible. Calling Benjamin “their brother” gives kinship a voice, while “cut off” keeps the rupture in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that feeling sorrow for someone is the same as repairing the harm: grief can be real while the rupture remains.
THE ROOT
וַיִּנָּחֲמוּ
vayinnāḥămû
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
To be sorry or regret; related forms also express consolation.
“grieved” in this verse is vayinnāḥămû. In this root family, regret and consolation are held together: the verb can mean to be sorry, and related forms name comfort and a comforter. The shared seed lets grief and consolation sit near each other without claiming the wound is healed.
ALSO GROWS
niḥam: Was sorry; regretted
נִחַם
This is the verbal form used here: Israel’s grief is expressed as sorrow for Benjamin.
neḥāmāh: Consolation; comfort
נֶחָמָה
The same root carries the possibility of consolation, though this verse names the loss without saying it has been repaired.
menaḥem: Comforter; one who consoles
מְנַחֵם
This branch shows how the root of regret also gives language to someone who meets another in sorrow.
THE PATTERN
Grief can name the loss of kin even when sorrow alone cannot reverse what has happened.
And the king trembled, and climbed up to the upper room over the gate, and wept. And as he walked, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would that I had died in your place, Absalom, my son, my son!And when he drew near, perceiving the city, he wept over it.And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.THE THREAD
And the LORD relented of having made humankind upon the earth, and it pained him at his heart.Judges 21:6 and Genesis 6:6 use forms of נחם (naḥam, to be sorry or grieved), rendered “repented” in both verses. The shared root lets the word carry inward sorrow, while each verse holds its own distinct rupture.
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