What Does Judges 14:7 Mean in the King James?
And he went down, and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well.
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 says she was “right” in Samson’s eyes, so attraction is already speaking in the language of judgment.
THE MEANING
The verse shows desire shaping what feels right: Samson sees this woman as fitting, and his eyes give that feeling the force of a verdict. Attraction can feel like clarity before anything else has been weighed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Feeling drawn to something does not by itself prove it is right; attraction can make its own verdict feel obvious.
THE ROOT
וַתִּישַׁר
vatishar
GROWS FROM
ישר
To be straight or level; by extension, to be right or pleasing.
“pleased” in this verse is vatishar. The Hebrew says she was “right” in Samson’s eyes, tying his pleasure to his sense of what fits. The same root can describe uprightness or a level path, so the verse lets attraction sound like a judgment of rightness.
ALSO GROWS
yosher: Uprightness, rectitude.
יֹשֶׁר
This branch shows how the idea of being straight extends into a sense of what is right.
mishor: A level place or plain.
מִישׁוֹר
The image of level ground makes “right” something that appears smooth and clear to the one looking.
THE PATTERN
What looks right from one person’s viewpoint can make desire feel like an objective verdict.
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.THE THREAD
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.The same root, ישר (yashar), links what is “right” in Samson’s eyes with what each person considers right in their own eyes. That shared wording connects one private attraction to the wider human habit of treating the eye’s verdict as its own proof.
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