What Does Judges 3:26 Mean in the King James?
And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the quarries, and escaped unto Seirath.
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
Ehud’s route passes beyond “the quarries,” whose Hebrew name belongs to the same carved-form family as the word for a graven image.
THE MEANING
Escape is a continuing passage: a person moves beyond the dangerous place and onward toward refuge even while the pursuers remain stalled. The repeated escape carries the movement past the first boundary, rather than ending at the first breakaway.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that escape must wait until every pursuer has moved or the danger has ended.
THE ROOT
הַפְּסִילִים
happesilim
GROWS FROM
פסל
Hew, carve, or shape by cutting.
The word rendered “quarries” is הַפְּסִילִים (happesilim), from פסל (pasal, hew or carve), the same word family as פֶּסֶל (pesel, carved image). The landmark carries a carved-stone sense that also reaches toward carved forms.
ALSO GROWS
pasal: To hew or carve.
פָּסַל
This verb gives the landmark its sense of cut or shaped stone.
pesel: A carved image or idol.
פֶּסֶל
This branch shows how the same root extends from carving stone to a carved form.
נִמְלַט
nimlaṭ
GROWS FROM
מלט
Slip away or escape; in other forms, deliver.
Both occurrences of “escaped” come from מלט (mālaṭ, slip away or escape). The same root carries Ehud beyond the immediate danger and onward to another place; the verse presents escape as one continuing movement.
ALSO GROWS
nimlaṭ: He escaped or slipped away.
נִמְלַט
This form marks the first break from danger.
millēṭ: Delivered or rescued.
מִלֵּט
This form reveals the root’s reach from getting free to being delivered.
THE PATTERN
When danger closes in, escape takes the form of a passage beyond its reach.
And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.THE THREAD
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.The psalm uses the same root מלט (mālaṭ, slip away or escape) for getting free of a snare. Its broken trap makes visible the same movement here: escape continues beyond the place of danger.
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