What Does Judges 21:7 Mean?
What shall we do for wives for those who remain, since we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters as wives?
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
How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the LORD that we will not give them of our daughters to wives?THE KEY
The oath protects the men’s own daughters while leaving other women exposed to the cost of keeping it.
THE MEANING
The verse shows a community treating its oath as a problem to solve while women appear as the objects of that solution: daughters to withhold and wives to obtain. The next move in the chapter preserves the oath by coercing women elsewhere, so the burden falls on those who are not parties to the promise. The language makes their absence from the decision visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A vow spoken in God’s name does not make every method of keeping it just; a promise can protect its speakers’ honor while others pay its cost.
THE ROOT
תֵּת
tēt from natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
Give, set, place.
The Hebrew describes daughters as what the men can give or withhold. The same root also means “set” or “place,” making the sentence’s transfer logic visible while leaving the women’s own choosing unspoken.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
The verse’s “give” belongs to this root, which can describe placing something as well as giving it; here, women are spoken of as objects to be assigned.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun carries the sense of something given, echoing the transfer language applied to the daughters and wives.
נִשְׁבַּעְנוּ
nishbaʿnu
GROWS FROM
שבע
sh-b-ʿ
Swear, take an oath.
“sworn” in this verse is nishbaʿnu. The oath verb shares its consonants with the Hebrew word for “seven,” a traditional association with solemn binding. Here the speakers treat the vow as closed and binding, even as their effort to preserve it transfers the consequences to women.
ALSO GROWS
shevuah: Oath.
שְׁבוּעָה
This noun from the same root names the binding promise that defines the speakers’ dilemma.
sheva: Seven.
שֶׁבַע
The shared consonants link the oath verb with “seven,” lending a sense of solemn completeness to the vow they treat as unbreakable.
THE PATTERN
A vow can become a snare when its makers preserve the wording while shifting its cost onto others.
It is a snare to a man who gulps down what is set apart, and after vows, looks back.But let your word be, Yes, yes; No, no. For whatever is more than these comes from evil.THE THREAD
And the children of Benjamin did so, and took wives for themselves according to their count, from the ones who whirled, whom they snatched; and they went and returned to their inheritance, and built the cities and settled in them.This verse answers the question in 21:7: the oath remains formally intact because the Benjaminites seize women the assembly did not formally give them. The word “caught” shows that the workaround transfers the cost of the vow to the women.
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