What Does Numbers 25:17 Mean in the King James?

Vex the Midianites, and smite them:

Numbers 25:17 · KJV

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

“Vex” carries the sense of binding hostility, turning enmity into pressure and blows against an entire people.

THE MEANING

This verse places a command before you: harass the Midianites and strike them. Its language makes hostility collective and bodily, naming an entire people as the target.

THE ROOT

צָרוֹר

tsaror

GROWS FROM

צרר

To bind or tie up; by extension, to act with hostility or harass.

The Hebrew word behind “vex” also carries the image of binding. English can make vexing sound like mere irritation, while the root gives the command a tighter force: constraining a people through hostility. The next verse uses the same root for the Midianites’ alleged vexing of Israel.

ALSO GROWS

tseror: A bundle or tied packet.

צְרֹר

This branch makes the root’s binding image concrete and deepens the force of “vex.”

tsarah: Trouble or distress.

צָרָה

It names the pressure associated with hostile binding.

THE PATTERN

When a named people are treated as a collective enemy, the text can command violence against the group.

Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people.

Numbers 31:2 · KJVThe Midianites are again named collectively as the target of a command for retaliation.

And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword:

Deuteronomy 20:13 · KJVThe command directs bodily violence at a group defined as the enemy.

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

1 Samuel 15:3 · KJVThe command extends violence across the named people and their living creatures.

THE THREAD

For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor’s sake.

Numbers 25:18 · KJV

The Hebrew repeats the same root for “vex,” now describing the Midianites as vexing you. The repeated root places the stated accusation beside the command and shows how binding hostility frames both.

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