What Does Judges 16:21 Mean in the King James?
But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.
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 same root names both Samson’s bronze bonds and the prisoners’ house: captivity binds the body and defines the place that holds it.
THE MEANING
This verse names captivity as a whole-body reality: sight is taken, movement is controlled, and the body is made to labor under another’s command. The prison is more than a place; its reach extends into perception, movement, and work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that confinement only limits where a person can go; here, it reaches into sight and takes control of the body’s labor.
THE ROOT
אָסַר
ʾāsar
GROWS FROM
א־ס־ר
ʾ-s-r
To bind, tie up, or imprison.
The verse uses this root for the act of binding Samson and again in the phrase translated as the prison house: literally, the house of the bound ones. The root joins the restraint on his body to the condition of the people held inside.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsîr: A prisoner; one who is bound.
אָסִיר
It names a person by the condition imposed on them, echoing how Samson’s bonds shape his whole life in this verse.
maʾasār: Imprisonment or confinement.
מַאֲסָר
This branch makes explicit the confinement carried by the root that appears both in Samson’s binding and in the prison house.
THE PATTERN
Captivity takes control of the body and its labor; release is described as loosening bonds and opening the prison.
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.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;And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.THE THREAD
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 phrase them that are bound is אֲסוּרִים (ʾasurim), from אָסַר (ʾāsar), the same root used for Samson’s bonds and the prisoners’ house. Isaiah turns that shared word toward liberty: the bound are the ones for whom the prison opens.
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