What Does Judges 19:29 Mean in the King James?
And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.
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
Hebrew uses the same root for “divided” and “pieces,” making the woman’s dismemberment itself the message sent across Israel.
THE MEANING
The verse places before you a woman’s dismembered body, carried as a message to all Israel. Its twelve pieces make the violence impossible to keep private or abstract.
THE ROOT
וַיְנַתְּחֶהָ
vayenattecheha
GROWS FROM
נתח
To cut into pieces; to dismember.
“divided” in this verse is vayenattecheha. English gives the action and its result different words, but Hebrew repeats נתח: the act of cutting and the pieces it produces share one root. The wording keeps her bodily dismemberment explicit.
ALSO GROWS
netachim: Cut pieces or portions.
נְתָחִים
The verse uses this noun from the same root for the twelve pieces, joining the act of dividing her to its result.
vayenattechem: He cut them into pieces.
וַיְנַתְּחֵם
The same verb appears when oxen are cut up and their pieces sent throughout Israel, a striking echo of this verse.
וַיְשַׁלְּחֶהָ
vayeshallecheha
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send forth, release, or let go.
The verb names movement from one place toward another. Here what crosses the land is a woman’s dismembered body, so “sent” carries the brutal force of the act without softening it.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: A name associated with water sent forth.
שִׁלֹחַ
At John 9:7, the pool of Siloam is glossed as “Sent,” where washing there restores sight.
mishloach: The act of sending something out.
מִשְׁלוֹחַ
This noun keeps attention on the movement from sender to recipients; here that movement carries the remains to the whole land.
THE PATTERN
Sending carries what leaves one place into another’s reach, and what arrives bears the consequences of that sending.
Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
And he took a yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the coasts of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done unto his oxen. And the fear of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out with one consent.This verse uses the same Hebrew root נתח for “hewed them in pieces,” then sends the pieces throughout Israel. The parallel is stark: here the body cut apart is a woman’s, carried through the same public grammar of fragments sent to summon a people.
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