What Does Judges 21:11 Mean in the King James?
And this is the thing that ye shall do, Ye shall utterly destroy every male, and every woman that hath lain by man.
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 behind “utterly destroy” marks people as placed under a ban, while “knowing” identifies women by sexual experience.
THE MEANING
The sentence states an order to kill every male and every woman identified by sexual experience. It makes sex and sexual history the boundary between those targeted for destruction and those treated differently.
THE ROOT
תַּחֲרִימוּ
taḥărîmû
GROWS FROM
חרם
ḥ-r-m
To ban or place under a ban; in this command, to devote to destruction.
The verb behind “utterly destroy” belongs to the same root as חֵרֶם, a thing placed under a ban. That framing does not soften the violence: the sentence identifies human beings as the ones the command marks for destruction.
ALSO GROWS
ḥērem: A ban, or something placed under a ban.
חֵרֶם
It shows that the command carries the language of a declared ban, not merely a general call to defeat.
lehaḥărîm: To place under a ban or devote to destruction.
לְהַחֲרִים
This verbal branch makes clear what the order does to the people it names.
יֹדַעַת
yōdaʿat
GROWS FROM
ידע
y-d-ʿ
To know or recognize; here, to know in a sexual sense.
“hath lain by man” in this verse is yōdaʿat. The Hebrew literally describes a woman as “knowing the lying of a male”; ידע can mean “know,” and this phrase uses it for sexual intercourse. The category is defined by relational and sexual history, a detail the English euphemism leaves less visible.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or recognize; in some constructions, to have sexual relations.
יָדַע
Here the verb names sexual experience, so “knowing” is part of the verse’s dividing criterion.
daʿat: Knowledge or knowing.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root keeps the language of knowing visible beneath the English phrase “hath lain by man.”
THE PATTERN
A command or ruler can make collective killing operate through a declared category of people.
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.Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.THE THREAD
And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins, that had known no man by lying with any male: and they brought them unto the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.This repeats ידע (“know”) to describe women as virgins, exposing the sexual idiom behind “hath lain by man.” Beside this verse, and the later statement that the survivors receive these women as wives (21:14), the distinction separates women targeted for death from women taken for marriage.
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