What Does Judges 21:15 Mean in the King James?
And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the LORD had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
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 people’s grief for Benjamin comes from a Hebrew root that also names consolation, even as the verse leaves Israel’s breach in view.
THE MEANING
Compassion for Benjamin exists alongside the recognition that a breach has opened in Israel’s tribes. The verse holds grief and communal fracture in the same frame; neither erases the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Seeing a breach in the community does not make compassion for Benjamin false or misplaced.
THE ROOT
נִחָם
niḥam
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
Console or comfort; in the Niphal form, feel regret or relent.
The Hebrew verb translated “repented them” is a Niphal form of נחם, a root also used for consolation. The people’s grief for Benjamin is linguistically close to comfort, while their compassion sits beside the breach in Israel’s tribes.
ALSO GROWS
niḥam: Feel regret, be sorry, or relent.
נִחַם
This is the form used here: the people are moved for Benjamin.
niḥem: Comfort or console.
נִחֵם
This form shows the root’s connection between being moved by grief and giving comfort.
menaḥem: Comforter.
מְנַחֵם
The related noun makes the root’s consoling sense visible.
פֶּרֶץ
perets
GROWS FROM
פרץ
p-r-ts
Break through or burst forth.
This word carries the force of a break-through, not an abstract loss: Israel’s tribal structure is described as torn open. The root holds the act of breaking through and the resulting breach within one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
parats: Break through or burst out.
פָּרַץ
The verb shows the force behind the breach named in the verse.
perets: Breach or rupture.
פֶּרֶץ
This noun names the opening left when a boundary is broken.
THE PATTERN
Breach language makes a boundary breaking visible, whether it appears as an opening, a rupture, or work of rebuilding.
And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez.And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;THE THREAD
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word for the breach in Judges, but places it within a picture of building, raising foundations, and restoring paths. The connection keeps the fracture in view while showing that a breach can become the very thing a restorer is named to address.
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