What Does Judges 20:43 Mean in the King James?
Thus they inclosed the Benjamites round about, and chased them, and trode them down with ease over against Gibeah toward the sunrising.
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 root for trampling also gives the word for a way: here the pursuers make their path by pressing the pursued into the ground.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the scene in an unbroken sequence: a people are enclosed, chased, and trodden down. Its victory is physical and total, with the pursued made the ground beneath their pursuers.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that victory is cleanly separable from what it does to the defeated: here the outcome is written on bodies underfoot.
THE ROOT
דָּרְכוּהוּ
dārəḵûhû
GROWS FROM
דרך
דרך (darakh) means to tread, step, or trample.
“trode them down” in this verse is dārəḵûhû. The word for trampling belongs to דרך (darakh), the same consonants found in דֶּרֶךְ (derekh), “way” or “path.” Hebrew holds the path and the tread in one family: here the pursuing force makes its way by pressing the pursued underfoot.
ALSO GROWS
derekh: Way, road, or path.
דֶּרֶךְ
The path shares its root with the act of treading, joining the route to the feet that make it.
midrakh: A tread or foothold; a place pressed by the foot.
מִדְרָךְ
This branch makes the pressure of a foot tangible, echoing the verse’s image of people trodden down.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes overwhelming force visible through the ground-level image of bodies pressed beneath power.
Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.THE THREAD
Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.Its verb תִּדְרֹךְ (tidrokh, “you tread”) comes from the same root דרך (darakh) as “trode” in Judges. The shared root flips the position: Psalm pictures a person standing over danger, while Judges shows the pursued beneath the advancing force.
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