What Does Judges 6:40 Mean in the King James?
And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.
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 marvel is the boundary: dryness is confined to the fleece while dew covers all the ground.
THE MEANING
God’s answer is visible in the exact difference between the surfaces: the fleece stays dry while dew lies across the ground. The distribution itself makes the sign legible.
THE ROOT
חֹרֶב
ḥōrev
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To dry up; to become desolate.
English “dry” sounds like a surface condition, but חֹרֶב belongs to a root that also names desolation. Here that condition is confined to the fleece while dew lies across all the ground.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēv: Dry, dried up, or laid waste.
חָרֵב
The same root carries dryness toward desolation, giving the fleece’s isolated condition a sharper edge.
ḥorvot: Ruins or desolations.
חָרְבוֹת
This branch reveals the root’s range from physical dryness to a place left desolate; in the verse, that desolation is limited to one surface.
גִּזָּה
gizzah
GROWS FROM
גזז
g-z-z
To shear or cut off.
The Hebrew word for fleece names wool that has been shorn from the animal. The sign places dryness on something cut away while dew covers the ground, sharpening the contrast between a detached piece and the whole field.
ALSO GROWS
gāzaz: To shear or cut off wool.
גָּזַז
The verb shows that the fleece is material separated from its source, the surface singled out for the sign.
gēz: A shearing, fleece, or mown grass.
גֵּז
The same root can name cut wool or grass, linking the fleece to material removed from a living source.
THE PATTERN
An unseen assurance becomes legible through a concrete sign that can be distinguished.
And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign.Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.THE THREAD
And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew.The preceding verse asks for this precise inversion: dryness only on the fleece, with dew over all the ground. Verse 40 answers by matching that distribution exactly, so the boundary is part of the sign.
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