What Does Judges 20:35 Mean in the King James?
And the LORD smote Benjamin before Israel: and the children of Israel destroyed of the Benjamites that day twenty and five thousand and an hundred men: all these drew the sword.
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 sentence gives the defeat two agents at once: the LORD smites Benjamin, and Israel destroys 25,100 men with swords.
THE MEANING
This verse places divine judgment and human killing in one frame: the LORD smites Benjamin, while Israel destroys 25,100 men, all of them sword-bearers. The exact number keeps the defeat attached to bodies and weapons rather than leaving it an abstract victory.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a victory attributed to the LORD must be bloodless: the verse names 25,100 destroyed men and the swords they draw.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגֹּף
vayyiggoph
GROWS FROM
נגף
strike, smite, defeat
English can make “smote” sound like a single blow, but this root also forms מַגֵּפָה (maggēphāh, “plague, blow, or defeat”) and נִגַּף (niggaph, “struck, defeated”). The language holds the strike and the resulting defeat together; here the LORD is named as the one who strikes while Israel’s destruction remains visible.
ALSO GROWS
maggēphāh: plague, blow, defeat
מַגֵּפָה
The same root names a collective blow as a plague or defeat, showing that the strike can register across a people, not only as one impact.
niggaph: struck, defeated
נִגַּף
This passive form names what the target becomes after the blow, linking the act of striking directly to the state of defeat.
וַיַּשְׁחִיתוּ
vayyashchitu
GROWS FROM
שחת
ruin, corrupt, destroy
“destroyed” in this verse is vayyashchitu. This root moves between ruin, corruption, and destruction, and it can name the destroyer as well as the damaged state. The verse gives that ruin human actors, the children of Israel, and a concrete count of men.
ALSO GROWS
mashḥīt: destroyer, one who destroys
מַשְׁחִית
This form names an agent of ruin, echoing the verse’s explicit naming of the people who destroy.
nishḥāt: ruined, corrupted
נִשְׁחָת
This passive form names the damaged state as well as the destructive act, extending the root’s sense beyond a faceless outcome.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names divine judgment through concrete violence, keeping the striking agent and the bodily cost in view.
For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.THE THREAD
Then the men of Judah gave a shout: and as the men of Judah shouted, it came to pass, that God smote Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah.The Hebrew verb וַיִּגֹּף (vayyiggoph, “smote”) shares its root with the word translated “smote” here, and again God is named as the striker with one people defeated before another. The repeated wording makes the LORD’s smiting of Benjamin part of a recurring scriptural expression for defeat, while this verse gives its human death toll in exact numbers.
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