What Does Judges 21:3 Mean in the King James?
And said, O LORD God of Israel, why is this come to pass in Israel, that there should be to day one tribe lacking in 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 word translated “lacking” comes from a root of attending and counting, so one tribe’s absence becomes something the whole people must reckon with.
THE MEANING
The question makes communal absence impossible to hide: one tribe is missing, and Israel feels that loss as a fracture in the whole. The question brings that fracture directly before the LORD, leaving the reason open. The missing tribe remains part of the people even in its absence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a people can still call itself whole while an entire tribe is missing.
THE ROOT
לְהִפָּקֵד
lehippaqed
GROWS FROM
פקד
p-q-d
To attend to or take account of; also to muster or count.
The Hebrew word for “lacking” comes from פקד, a root that also means to attend to, muster, or take account. The missing tribe is the part of the people that cannot be found in the count, making absence visible as a fracture in the whole.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: To attend to, visit, muster, or count.
פָּקַד
The root’s sense of taking account makes the absent tribe something the people must reckon with.
nifqad: To be missing or absent.
נִפְקַד
This form names the condition of the tribe in the verse: it is not present in Israel’s reckoning.
pequddah: Oversight, charge, or appointment.
פְּקֻדָּה
This branch also carries the sense of being placed under someone’s attention or account.
THE PATTERN
The loss of even one part is a wound the whole cannot dismiss.
And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.THE THREAD
And they said unto Moses, Thy servants have taken the sum of the men of war which are under our charge, and there lacketh not one man of us.Judges calls the tribe “lacking” with nifqad, from פקד; Numbers says “there lacketh not one man” with the same root. In one verse a tribe is missing; in the other, the count confirms that no one is missing.
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