What Does Judges 6:14 Mean?
And the LORD turned his face to him, and said, Go in this your strength, and you will deliver Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?
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 LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?THE KEY
The word “sent” carries release inside it: Gideon’s commission is the movement by which Israel is let go from Midian’s grip.
THE MEANING
The LORD turns toward you and recognizes the strength already present, then gives it direction through a sending. Deliverance moves through that strength toward those held in another’s grip.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that you must first become someone else before your present strength can matter is undone by the command to go in this might and by the reminder that you are sent.
THE ROOT
שְׁלַחְתִּיךָ
shelaḥtika
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
To send forth or dispatch; the movement also carries the sense of letting go or releasing.
Here, “sent” is more than an assignment: the root also carries sending away or release, so the mission is release in motion. The commission and its outcome meet in one word, Gideon is sent as the means by which Midian’s grip loosens.
ALSO GROWS
shilluaḥ: Sending away; release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
The same root can describe letting something go, joining Gideon’s being sent with the release his mission brings.
Shiloach: The name of the pool translated “Sent.”
שִׁלֹחַ
At Siloam, a person washes and receives sight; sent waters become a place of restoration (John 9:7).
וְהוֹשַׁעְתָּ
vehōshaʿta
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
To deliver or rescue; here, deliverance is movement from a constricting hold toward spaciousness.
“deliver” in this verse is vehōshaʿta. The verb translated “save” is a form of yasha, the root of deliverance: bringing someone out from under a constricting hold into room to live. The line moves from Midian’s hand toward Israel’s deliverance, and the same root lives in the name Yeshua.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: Deliverance or rescue.
יְשׁוּעָה
It names the release that Gideon’s sending is meant to bring about.
Yeshua: A name formed from the root of deliverance.
יֵשׁוּעַ
The name carries the same nature present in this commission: deliverance from what holds a people.
THE PATTERN
Being sent is how release and restoration reach those held in a constricting grip.
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.The Hebrew word translated “sent” shares the ש־ל־ח (sh-l-ḥ) root with “sent” in this verse. Here, sending is joined directly to healing and deliverance: what is sent loosens the grip of what destroys.
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