What Does Judges 3:8 Mean?
So the LORD's anger burned against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushanrishathaim king of Mesopotamia, and the children of Israel served Chushanrishathaim eight years.
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
Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia: and the children of Israel served Chushan-rishathaim eight years.THE KEY
The word “served” shares its root with “servant” and “labor,” so the eight years describe a people’s time and work under another ruler’s control.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s anger burns against Israel, and its consequence is concrete: a ruler takes hold of a people, and their years become service. The verse speaks now wherever power controls another person’s labor and time; oppression reaches into daily life.
THE ROOT
וַיַּעַבְדוּ
wayyaʿavdû
GROWS FROM
עבד
to work, serve
“served” in this verse is wayyaʿavdû. This root binds the act of serving to the person who serves. Here, being sold into a ruler’s hand makes that service coercive: the verse describes control over people through their labor and time.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: A servant or worker under another’s authority.
עֶבֶד
The noun names the person in the same root family as the service they perform, making the verse’s subjection personal.
ʿavodah: Work, service, or labor.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch brings out the daily work contained in the eight years of serving.
וַיִּמְכְּרֵם
wayyimkerēm
GROWS FROM
מכר
to sell or transfer through sale
“sold” in this verse is wayyimkerēm. The verse describes a transfer of people into another ruler’s control, then names the service that follows. Sale and subjection are joined in one sequence: the receiving hand gains power over their years.
ALSO GROWS
mekhirah: A sale or act of selling.
מְכִירָה
This noun makes the transfer in “he sold them” explicit.
mokher: A seller.
מֹכֵר
This branch identifies the agent who transfers something by sale, sharpening the force of the verse’s claim that the LORD sells Israel into the king’s hand.
THE PATTERN
A power’s claim over people becomes visible in the service or obedience it commands.
And the LORD's anger burned hot against Israel, and he gave them into the hands of those who stripped them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before the faces of their enemies.And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.Do you not know that to the one you set yourselves beside as servants for hearing and response, his servants you are, the one you hear and respond to; whether of falling short unto death, or of hearing and response unto alignment?THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.The Hebrew root עבד (ʿabad, work or serve) appears in the forms translated “service” and “serve” in Exodus 1:14, as it does in “served” here. The shared root shows how rule becomes concrete in labor imposed on a people.
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