What Does Judges 21:6 Mean in the King James?
And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother, and said, There is one tribe cut off from Israel this day.
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 “repented” carries regret and consolation in the same root, so Israel’s grief names the rupture without repairing it.
THE MEANING
You can grieve a loss and still be inside the consequences that made it possible. Calling Benjamin “their brother” gives kinship a voice, while “cut off” keeps the rupture in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that feeling sorrow for someone is the same as repairing the harm: grief can be real while the rupture remains.
THE ROOT
וַיִּנָּחֲמוּ
vayinnāḥămû
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
To be sorry or regret; related forms also express consolation.
“repented them” in this verse is vayinnāḥămû. In this root family, regret and consolation are held together: the verb can mean to be sorry, and related forms name comfort and a comforter. The shared seed lets grief and consolation sit near each other without claiming the wound is healed.
ALSO GROWS
niḥam: Was sorry; regretted
נִחַם
This is the verbal form used here: Israel’s grief is expressed as sorrow for Benjamin.
neḥāmāh: Consolation; comfort
נֶחָמָה
The same root carries the possibility of consolation, though this verse names the loss without saying it has been repaired.
menaḥem: Comforter; one who consoles
מְנַחֵם
This branch shows how the root of regret also gives language to someone who meets another in sorrow.
THE PATTERN
Grief can name the loss of kin even when sorrow alone cannot reverse what has happened.
And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.THE THREAD
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.Judges 21:6 and Genesis 6:6 use forms of נחם (naḥam, to be sorry or grieved), rendered “repented” in both verses. The shared root lets the word carry inward sorrow, while each verse holds its own distinct rupture.
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