What Does Judges 20:44 Mean in the King James?
And there fell of Benjamin eighteen thousand men; all these were men of valour.
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 word rendered ‘valour’ carries strength and military force, so the men’s power remains visible inside their fall.
THE MEANING
The verse places eighteen thousand men from Benjamin falling before you and calls them men of valor. Their strength stays visible inside the loss; the number does not make them faceless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that strength guarantees safety: these are men of valor, and they still fall.
THE ROOT
חָיִל
ḥayil
GROWS FROM
חיל
ḥ-y-l
Strength, capacity, force, or resources.
חָיִל (ḥayil) carries strength and capability, and this root also names armed force and resources. ‘Men of valour’ holds courage and fighting capacity together, making the scale of their defeat concrete.
ALSO GROWS
ḥayil: Strength, valor, or resources.
חַיִל
This form keeps strength and effective capacity within the word’s range, clarifying why ‘valor’ can describe capable fighters.
ḥeil: Army or military force.
חֵיל
This form names an army or force, showing how the root can describe collective military strength as well as a person’s valor.
וַיִּפְּלוּ
vayyippelu
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
To fall, drop, or come down.
The verb וַיִּפְּלוּ (vayyippelu), ‘they fell,’ comes from a root whose branches can name falling as an event or a downfall. The verse places that blunt fact beside the men’s strength, leaving both fully visible.
ALSO GROWS
nefilah: A fall or falling.
נְפִילָה
This noun makes falling itself an event named by the same root.
mappalah: A downfall or collapse.
מַפָּלָה
This branch extends the root’s sense from a fall to the resulting downfall.
THE PATTERN
A fall is real, but it does not by itself name the whole condition of the one who falls.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;THE THREAD
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.In both verses, the Hebrew verb for falling comes from the same root; here, the fallen are called men of valor, and there, the fallen are called mighty. The shared root keeps the fact of the fall beside the stature of those who die.
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