What Does 1 Chronicles 5:21 Mean in the King James?
And they took away their cattle; of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred and fifty thousand, and of asses two thousand, and of men an hundred thousand.
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 final tally is one hundred thousand נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh, living souls): human lives carried away in the same act of capture as the herds.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the taking a precise scale: fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, two thousand donkeys, and one hundred thousand human beings. It names the people within the same captured inventory as the animals, keeping the violence concrete rather than abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the tally is only property: the last number counts human beings seized alongside the animals.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nephesh
GROWS FROM
נפש
Living soul, the living self or person.
Behind “men” stands the phrase נֶפֶשׁ אָדָם (nephesh adam, a human living soul). The verse counts these living persons explicitly after counting animals, so the final number is a human tally inside the spoils of war.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul; a living person.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the noun carried into the phrase for the one hundred thousand human beings.
naphash: Rest; be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
The related verb describes a living person’s rest or refreshment, widening the person in this count beyond a unit of inventory.
וַיִּשְׁבּוּ
wayyishbu
GROWS FROM
שבה
To take captive; carry away as a captive.
The action is capture: this root names both taking captive and the state of captivity. The KJV rendering “took away” carries that act across the herds and the human count.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: To take captive.
שָׁבָה
This is the verb’s base form behind the taking, giving the action its captivity sense.
shevi: Captive; captivity.
שְׁבִי
The noun names the condition created by the taking, so the people tally follows the verb into captivity.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names captivity as a concrete condition imposed on persons, and release as a concrete movement out of it.
And the children of Israel carried away captive of their brethren two hundred thousand, women, sons, and daughters, and took also away much spoil from them, and brought the spoil to Samaria.The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,THE THREAD
Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.Judges pairs שְׁבִי (shevi, captivity) with שָׁבָה (shavah, take captive), turning the same root into “lead thy captivity captive.” The shared root makes the force of “took away” unmistakable, while Judges flips the direction: what captures can itself be captured.
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