What Does Judges 9:56 Mean?
Thus God returned the evil of Abimelech, which he did to his father in slaying his seventy brothers.
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
Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren:THE KEY
The Hebrew verb says God “caused it to return”: judgment is the harm Abimelech sent outward coming back to its source.
THE MEANING
The verse holds open now that harm is not erased by power or time: God brings Abimelech’s violence against his father’s house back upon him. The name Abimelech means “my father is king,” echoing the royal claim pressed against that household.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that power can separate a person from the harm they cause and leave it behind. The verse shows that harm returning under God’s judgment.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשֶׁב
wayyāshev
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To return or turn back; in this verb form, to cause something to return.
“returned” in this verse is wayyāshev. “Rendered” carries the judicial sense, while the Hebrew verb also carries the movement of return. God brings Abimelech’s own evil back upon him, making judgment the return of the harm he sent outward.
ALSO GROWS
hēshîv: Bring back, restore, or return
הֵשִׁיב
This causative form makes the root’s returning action explicit, as it is in the verse.
teshuvah: Return or turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
The same root names a turning back, illuminating how the verse presents consequence as something that comes back to its source.
רָעַת
raʿat
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
raʿaʿ
To be bad or harmful; the word family can name evil, harm, or calamity.
The word includes moral evil and the harm or calamity it brings. Here the wickedness is not an abstract label: it is bound to the violence against Abimelech’s father’s house that returns upon him.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad or evil
רַע
This form names the moral character of what Abimelech does.
raʿah: Evil, harm, or calamity
רָעָה
This form carries the concrete consequence of evil, connecting Abimelech’s wrongdoing with the harm that comes back upon him.
THE PATTERN
Violence and wrongdoing return upon the one who sends them out.
Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.For near is the day of the LORD upon all the nations. As you have done, so will it be done to you. Your repayment turns back upon your own head.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.The Hebrew verb translated “rendered” in Judges and “return” in the Psalm comes from שׁוּב (shuv), meaning “to return.” The Psalm makes the same root’s movement visible: violence comes back upon the one who set it in motion.
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