What Does Judges 1:5 Mean in the King James?
And they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek: and they fought against him, and they slew the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
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 verse finds the “lord of Bezek” inside Bezek itself, fastening the ruler’s title to the territory where his power is confronted.
THE MEANING
Here, conquest comes into view as bloodshed: the ruler is found, battle is waged, and the Canaanites and Perizzites are killed. You see the taking of power and the killing of peoples held in a single sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that capturing a ruler tells the whole story of conquest; this verse also names the peoples killed in the campaign.
THE ROOT
אֲדֹנִי־בֶּזֶק
ʾAdoni-Bezeq
GROWS FROM
אדן
ʾ-d-n
Lord, master; one who rules.
Adoni means “my lord,” so Adoni-bezek functions as a title: “lord of Bezek.” The repeated Bezek binds the ruler to the place where he is found, making his power inseparable from that territory.
ALSO GROWS
ʾadon: Lord, master.
אָדוֹן
This base form shows the authority carried in the ruler’s title.
ʾadonai: My Lord; a title for God.
אֲדֹנָי
The same lord-language can name supreme authority; here it is attached to a human ruler and a specific place.
THE PATTERN
In conquest accounts, the taking of territory is narrated through the peoples and places destroyed.
But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.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.THE THREAD
And Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.The next verse identifies Adoni-bezek as a ruler who mutilates defeated kings, then gives his own reading of his capture: he says the violence he inflicted has returned to him. That disclosure places the violence here in a cycle of domination and retaliation, without erasing the Canaanites and Perizzites killed in verse 5.
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