What Does 1 Chronicles 20:3 Mean in the King James?
And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. And David and all the people returned to Jerusalem.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The return to Jerusalem, a name carrying wholeness, comes immediately after the cutting of a people, with no word that makes the violence whole.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the violence against the people of an Ammonite city beside David and his people returning to Jerusalem. The return closes the account, but the text gives no repair or release for those harmed. Both remain present in the same sentence.
THE ROOT
וַיָּשָׁב
wayyāshav
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
turn back, return
“returned” in this verse is wayyāshav. Here the return is spatial: David and the people come back to Jerusalem after the violence. The same root can mark turning back, but this verse gives no word that makes their return an undoing of the harm.
ALSO GROWS
shav: returns, turns back
שָׁב
It makes the movement in David’s return visible as a turning back.
teshuvah: return, turning
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch shows the root’s wider sense of turning, while the verse itself names a return to a place.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
be whole, complete
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The closing destination carries shalom, wholeness, in its name. Yet the verse places that name after bodily violence; it does not say the violence has been made whole.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
It lets the name of the destination resonate with wholeness at the verse’s ending.
shalem: whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It brings the root’s sense of completeness beside harm the verse leaves unrepaired.
הוֹצִיא
hotsi
GROWS FROM
יצא
go out, come out
“brought out” in this verse is hotsi. The verb is causative: David brings the city’s people out, making their exit an act of his power. Its root also names ordinary going out, but here going out leads into exposure to violence, not deliverance.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: go out, come out
יָצָא
It shows the basic movement underneath David’s act of bringing the people out.
motsa: outlet, source
מוֹצָא
It shares the root’s sense of an emergence or way out, sharpened here by what the people face after being brought out.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can portray power as authority inflicting bodily harm on people under its control.
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.And he took the elders of the city, and thorns of the wilderness and briers, and with them he taught the men of Succoth.And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.THE THREAD
A Song of degrees. When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.“Returned” here and “turned again” in the psalm share the Hebrew root שׁוּב (shuv), meaning to turn back or return. In Chronicles the return follows violence; in the psalm the same root marks Zion’s restoration, opening the difference between coming back to a place and seeing what has been restored.
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