What Does Judges 3:8 Mean in the King James?
Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia: and the children of Israel served Chushan-rishathaim eight years.
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 “served” shares its root with “servant” and “labor,” so the eight years describe a people’s time and work under another ruler’s control.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s anger burns against Israel, and its consequence is concrete: a ruler takes hold of a people, and their years become service. The verse speaks now wherever power controls another person’s labor and time; oppression reaches into daily life.
THE ROOT
וַיַּעַבְדוּ
wayyaʿavdû
GROWS FROM
עבד
to work, serve
“served” in this verse is wayyaʿavdû. This root binds the act of serving to the person who serves. Here, being sold into a ruler’s hand makes that service coercive: the verse describes control over people through their labor and time.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: A servant or worker under another’s authority.
עֶבֶד
The noun names the person in the same root family as the service they perform, making the verse’s subjection personal.
ʿavodah: Work, service, or labor.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch brings out the daily work contained in the eight years of serving.
וַיִּמְכְּרֵם
wayyimkerēm
GROWS FROM
מכר
to sell or transfer through sale
“sold” in this verse is wayyimkerēm. The verse describes a transfer of people into another ruler’s control, then names the service that follows. Sale and subjection are joined in one sequence: the receiving hand gains power over their years.
ALSO GROWS
mekhirah: A sale or act of selling.
מְכִירָה
This noun makes the transfer in “he sold them” explicit.
mokher: A seller.
מֹכֵר
This branch identifies the agent who transfers something by sale, sharpening the force of the verse’s claim that the LORD sells Israel into the king’s hand.
THE PATTERN
A power’s claim over people becomes visible in the service or obedience it commands.
And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.The Hebrew root עבד (ʿabad, work or serve) appears in the forms translated “service” and “serve” in Exodus 1:14, as it does in “served” here. The shared root shows how rule becomes concrete in labor imposed on a people.
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