What Does Judges 20:16 Mean in the King James?

Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss.

Judges 20:16 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The Hebrew word for a shot that does not miss shares its root with the Bible’s word for missing.

THE MEANING

You are looking at violence made exact: a stone travels within a hair’s breadth of its mark, and not one misses. Here, a tiny deviation carries enormous consequence because precision decides whether the stone strikes.

THE ROOT

יַחֲטִא

yaḥăṭi

GROWS FROM

חטא

To miss, to fail to reach the mark.

The English “miss” keeps the literal image; Hebrew ⁨חטא⁩ also names missing and wrongdoing. The verse’s flawless aim and the Bible’s language of human failure grow from one seed: a deviation from the mark.

ALSO GROWS

ḥēṭʾ: Missing, failure, wrongdoing.

חֵטְא

The same root extends from a stone’s flight to human failure, giving “miss” a wider scriptural resonance.

ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or sin; also the ritual offering associated with sin.

חַטָּאת

This branch keeps the root’s language of missing present even where English uses a different word.

THE PATTERN

Aimed movement is measured by whether it reaches its mark.

And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.

1 Samuel 17:49 · KJVThe stone reaches its precise mark, and the encounter turns on that accuracy.

I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:

1 Corinthians 9:26 · KJVThe image contrasts directed effort with movement that has no clear mark.

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:14 · KJVThe runner’s movement is defined by the mark toward which it is aimed.

THE THREAD

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah.

Psalm 4:4 · KJV

Judges uses ⁨חטא⁩ where the stone does not miss; Psalm 4 uses the same root in “sin not.” The shared word family binds physical accuracy to the wider image of missing the mark in a person’s life.

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