What Does Judges 18:25 Mean in the King James?
And the children of Dan said unto him, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows run upon thee, and thou lose thy life, with the lives of thy household.
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 Hebrew word names the attackers’ bitter inner selves and the lives they threaten, linking bitterness to danger for an entire household.
THE MEANING
The threat is direct: the speaker’s voice must go quiet or bitter-souled men may attack him, putting his life and his household’s lives at risk. The Hebrew repeats nefesh, “living soul,” for both the men’s inner state and the lives in danger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that this is a simple request to stop talking: the silence is demanded under threat of death to the speaker and his household.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nefesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
N-P-Sh
The living self; a person as a whole.
“life / soul” in this verse is nefesh. The verse repeats nefesh in “bitter of soul,” “thy life,” and “the life of thy household.” English separates an inner condition from the lives at stake, while Hebrew lets one word carry the living self from one to the other.
ALSO GROWS
marei nefesh: Bitter of soul
מָרֵי נֶפֶשׁ
The attackers’ bitterness is described through the same word that later names the lives being threatened.
nafshəkha: Your life; your living soul
נַפְשְׁךָ
This is the same word in the threat against the speaker himself.
nefesh beitekha: The life of your household
נֶפֶשׁ בֵּיתֶךָ
The repeated word extends the threat from one person to everyone in his household.
מָרֵי
marei
GROWS FROM
מ־ר־ר
M-R-R
To be bitter; to embitter.
“Angry fellows” can sound like men caught in a passing flare; the Hebrew calls them men bitter of soul. This root also describes lives being made bitter and bitter herbs, linking the word to a condition that can be inflicted or tasted, not only a moment of anger.
ALSO GROWS
vaymareru: They made bitter
וַיְמָרְרוּ
Exodus 1:14 uses this root for lives made bitter, showing bitterness as something that can bear down on a person’s life.
merorim: Bitter herbs
מְרֹרִים
Exodus 12:8 uses the same root for bitterness that is literally tasted.
THE PATTERN
Bitterness can fill the living self and become suffering that reaches beyond one person.
And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;THE THREAD
And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore.The Hebrew phrase “bitterness of soul” shares the bitterness root and nefesh, the living self, with Judges 18:25. Here it names distress; in Judges, the same pairing describes men whose threat places a household’s lives in danger.
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