What Does Judges 3:16 Mean?
But Ehud made himself a dagger with two mouths, a forearm long, and girded it under his garment upon his right thigh.
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
But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls the dagger’s two edges “two mouths,” turning its sharpness into an image of a doubled opening force.
THE MEANING
A lethal plan takes bodily form: Ehud’s short sword, sharp on both sides, stays hidden beneath his clothing against his right thigh. Its edges are named as mouths, so concealment already holds the violence that will soon be exposed.
THE ROOT
פֵיוֹת
piyyot
GROWS FROM
פֶּה
Mouth or opening; here, the word names the blade’s cutting edges.
Hebrew says “two mouths,” not simply two edges. The same word can name the opening of a well or sack, so the blade is pictured as a doubled opening with the power to cut.
ALSO GROWS
pi ha-be’er: The mouth of the well
פִּי הַבְּאֵר
This phrase uses mouth for an opening in the earth, showing how the word extends beyond speech.
pi has-saq: The mouth of the sack
פִּי הַשַּׂק
A container’s opening is also its mouth; the dagger’s edges take the same opening-language into a violent image.
חֶרֶב
cherev
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ב
ḥ-r-b
The word family carries the sense of drying up or being laid waste; חֶרֶב names a sword.
The dagger belongs to a word family associated with desolation. That shared consonant-shape lets the weapon carry an undertone of devastation beneath its plain name.
ALSO GROWS
charav: To become dry or desolate
חָרַב
The same consonants connect the sword’s word family with the condition of land laid waste.
chorbah: Ruin or desolation
חָרְבָּה
This branch makes the destructive shade of חֶרֶב visible in the verse’s hidden weapon.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses mouth-language to make the sword’s cutting force speak through images of opening and penetration.
But Ehud made himself a dagger with two mouths, a forearm long, and girded it under his garment upon his right thigh.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.He holds in his right hand seven stars, and from his mouth comes a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face is like the sun shining in its power.THE THREAD
For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.Hebrews calls the sword “twoedged,” using Greek δίστομος (distomos), literally “two-mouthed”, the same unusual image as Judges’ “two mouths.” The image shifts from Ehud’s concealed blade to a word that penetrates and exposes what is held within.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us