What Does Judges 20:21 Mean in the King James?
And the children of Benjamin came forth out of Gibeah, and destroyed down to the ground of the Israelites that day twenty and two thousand men.
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 Hebrew word for slaughter shares its root with “corrupt,” letting destruction and corruption echo one another beneath the English.
THE MEANING
This verse makes the cost impossible to blur: twenty-two thousand Israelite men fall in a single day. The blow comes from Benjamin, a brother tribe, so shared belonging does not prevent a community from turning lethal force on itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that people who share a name or covenant are therefore safe from one another.
THE ROOT
וַיַּשְׁחִיתוּ
wayyashchitu
GROWS FROM
שחת
shachat
To ruin, spoil, corrupt, or destroy.
The Hebrew verb carries a wider field than the English “destroyed”: its root also names corruption and ruin. That range lets the slaughter echo the language of corruption, showing that what is ruined here includes the shared human order, not only the lives counted.
ALSO GROWS
vatishachet: Describes the earth as corrupt in Genesis 6:11.
וַתִּשָּׁחֵת
The same root appears where the earth is described as corrupt and filled with violence, linking ruin with the violence that fills it.
hammashchit: Names the destroyer in Exodus 12:23.
הַמַּשְׁחִית
This form names an agent of destruction, showing that the same root can describe both ruin and the force that brings it.
THE PATTERN
When conflict turns inward, kinship gives way to casualties, and the dead become the measure of the struggle.
And Benjamin went forth against them out of Gibeah the second day, and destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand men; all these drew the sword.And there was a very sore battle that day; and Abner was beaten, and the men of Israel, before the servants of David.Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.THE THREAD
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.“Corrupt” in Genesis and “destroyed” here grow from the same Hebrew root, שחת (shachat), meaning to ruin or corrupt. The shared root lets the verse’s slaughter echo a wider pattern: corruption and violence belong to the same field of ruin.
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