What Does Judges 9:29 Mean?
Who will give this people into my hand! Then I would remove Abimelech. And he said to Abimelech, Increase your army, and come out.
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 would to God this people were under my hand! then would I remove Abimelech. And he said to Abimelech, Increase thine army, and come out.THE KEY
The Hebrew frames the wish as a question of who will place the people in the speaker’s hand, making the giver of power part of the claim.
THE MEANING
Here, a desire for command takes the form of imagining people placed in one’s hand; the wish is immediately joined to removing a rival and calling him into the open. The verse holds desire, threat, and provocation together in one utterance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A declared claim over people is not the same as their being placed in one’s hand; the verse exposes the gap between wanting power and possessing it.
THE ROOT
מִי יִתֵּן אֶת־הָעָם הַזֶּה בְּיָדִי
mi-yitten et-ha‘am hazzeh
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
To give, set, or place; to transfer something into another’s keeping.
“Who will give this people into my hand” in this verse is mi-yitten et-ha‘am hazzeh. The Hebrew wish begins with mi-yitten, “Who will give?”, while the KJV renders the whole thought as “would to God.” The underlying verb makes the imagined transfer explicit: the people are to be placed in the speaker’s hand before he removes Abimelech.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This verb names the transfer the wish depends on: someone must place the people in the speaker’s hand.
mattanah: A gift; something given.
מַתָּנָה
This related word carries the same seed of giving, revealing how the root pictures what is received as something placed into another’s keeping.
THE PATTERN
Power is pictured as a transfer into someone’s hand, so words of possession also reveal who is imagined to grant it.
But he refused, and said to his master's wife, Behold, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has placed all that he has into my hand.Into your hand I place my breath; you ransom me, O LORD, God of truth.And the Slanderer said to him, I will give you all this authority and the weight of them, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I want.THE THREAD
This day the LORD will shut you up in my hand; and I will strike you, and turn your head aside from you; and I will give the corpses of the camp of the Philistines this day to the birds of the heavens, and to the beasts of the earth; that all the earth may perceive that there is a God in Israel.The same Hebrew root, נתן (natan, give or place), sits behind the wish that someone put the people into the speaker’s hand and the declaration that the LORD will give the opponent into David’s hand. One leaves the giver unstated; the other names the LORD.
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