What Does Judges 6:5 Mean?
For they came up with their livestock and their tents, and they came like locusts for multitude, for both they and their camels were without number, and they entered the land to ruin it.
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
For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it.THE KEY
The invaders’ name for a swarm carries the idea of multiplication, and their purpose is to turn the land they enter into ruin.
THE MEANING
You are shown an invasion whose force exceeds counting and whose aim is the destruction of the land. The threat lies both in its overwhelming number and in what that force intends to do once it enters.
THE ROOT
לְשַׁחֲתָהּ
leshachatah
GROWS FROM
שחת
To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
The root behind “destroy” also describes corruption and ruin. English can make destruction sound like a single outcome, while this root connects the act of ruining a place with the state of being corrupted.
ALSO GROWS
vattishachet: Became ruined or corrupted.
וַתִּשָּׁחֵת
Genesis uses this form of the same root for the earth filled with violence, connecting corruption with the ruin threatened here.
mashchit: One who brings destruction.
מַשְׁחִית
This related form names the agent of ruin, bringing the root’s sense of destructive action into view.
אַרְבֶּה
arbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
To grow, increase, or become many.
“grasshoppers” in this verse is arbeh. The Hebrew word for locusts is linked to the root for becoming many. The verse then echoes that sense with “for multitude” and “without number”: the swarm’s identity and its overwhelming scale reinforce each other.
ALSO GROWS
hirbah: Increased or made many.
הִרְבָּה
This verb shares the increase-root, making the swarm’s multiplication more than a visual comparison.
harbeh: A great quantity or number.
הַרְבֵּה
This related form echoes the verse’s emphasis on multitude and a number beyond counting.
THE PATTERN
A multiplying force can overrun the land it enters and consume what it reaches.
For they covered the eye of the whole land, so that it went dark. They ate all the grass of the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left, and no green remained in the trees, or in the grass of the field, through all the land of Egypt.What the shearer has left, the locust has eaten; and what the locust has left, the lapper has eaten; and what the lapper has left, the gnawer has eaten.And locusts come out of the smoke upon the earth, and to them is given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.THE THREAD
The earth also was ruined before God, and the earth was filled with violence.Judges uses לְשַׁחֲתָהּ (leshachatah, “to destroy it”), while Genesis uses וַתִּשָּׁחֵת (vattishachet, “was corrupted”), both from שחת (shachat), the root of ruin and corruption. The shared root connects a land corrupted by violence with a land threatened by invading force.
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