What Does Judges 19:19 Mean in the King James?
Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses; and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing.
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
A full provision list can say “nothing is lacking” while leaving the people in the room unprotected.
THE MEANING
You hear a list of straw, fodder, bread, and wine become a claim of total sufficiency. But a complete inventory does not secure the people in the room; the violence that follows makes that omission brutal. Material plenty and human safety are different kinds of need.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Enough provisions do not mean that no one is in need; a person can have food and shelter while remaining exposed to violence.
THE ROOT
מַחְסוֹר
maḥsôr
GROWS FROM
חסר
ḥ-s-r
ḥ-s-r: to be lacking or come up short.
The word מַחְסוֹר (maḥsôr, lack) comes from חסר (ḥ-s-r, to be lacking). The same root forms “I shall not want” in Psalm 23:1, so “want” here names a state of coming short, not simply desire; the verse declares that shortage ended within a material inventory, while the scene exposes a need that inventory cannot name.
ALSO GROWS
eḥsār: I shall lack; I shall be in want.
אֶחְסָר
This is the form behind “I shall not want” in Psalm 23:1, linking the verse’s claim of no lack to the shepherd image.
heḥsîr: To lack or come up short; to be deficient.
הֶחְסִיר
This form appears in Exodus 16:18, where the one who gathered little “had no lack,” showing the same root used for measured material provision.
THE PATTERN
A count of material goods never exhausts the whole of human need.
And when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating.And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.The word translated “want” here and in Psalm 23:1 comes from the same Hebrew root חסר (ḥ-s-r, to be lacking). The shared root opens a distinction: a stocked shelter can still be short of safety, while the psalm places sufficiency in being shepherded.
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