What Does Judges 1:21 Mean in the King James?
And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day.
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 Hebrew root for “drive out” also means “inherit,” so the failed expulsion leaves the inheritance incomplete.
THE MEANING
The verse holds an unfinished conquest in view: Benjamin’s presence does not erase the Jebusites, who still dwell beside them. Jerusalem (יְרוּשָׁלִַם, Yerushalayim, “two wholenesses”) sharpens the tension: the name carries wholeness while the city remains shared. It speaks now wherever claiming a space is mistaken for fully possessing it; what remains there makes the incompletion visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that possession is complete once a claim is made falls away here: the Jebusites remain, so the transfer is visibly unfinished.
THE ROOT
הוֹרִישׁוּ
hôrîšû
GROWS FROM
ירש
y-r-sh
To possess or inherit; in the causative form, to dispossess or drive out.
The Hebrew phrase translated “drive out” uses the causative form of the root that also means “possess” or “inherit.” One root shows both sides of the transfer: dispossession for one people and possession for another. Here the transfer remains incomplete, and the Jebusites still dwell beside Benjamin.
ALSO GROWS
yārash: To take or receive possession, including as an inheritance.
יָרַשׁ
This is the same root in its basic form, revealing possession as the other side of the verse’s attempted dispossession.
môrāšāh: An inherited possession.
מֹרָשָׁה
This noun shows how the root can name the lasting possession received; in this verse, that possession remains unsettled.
THE PATTERN
What remains in a shared space continues to shape what happens there.
Neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and her towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would dwell in that land.But were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works.Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?THE THREAD
And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.Genesis uses the same root ירש (y-r-sh, possess or inherit) in “inherit it,” naming the receiving side of what Judges names as dispossession. The shared root reveals one transfer with two human sides.
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