What Does Numbers 31:10 Mean in the King James?
And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.
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 fire reaches both the cities people inhabit and the fortified enclosures meant to shelter them.
THE MEANING
This verse holds destruction in full view: the places of dwelling and the places of defense alike are burned. In its telling, neither settlement nor stronghold remains outside the reach of the fire.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A fortified place can guarantee safety: even the strongholds are named as burned.
THE ROOT
שָׂרְפוּ
śārəp̄ū
GROWS FROM
שרף
to burn or consume with fire
“burnt” in this verse is śārəp̄ū. The Hebrew verb שָׂרְפוּ (śārəp̄ū, “they burned”) comes from שרף (saraph, “to burn”). Related forms carry the same fiery image into a burning and a fiery creature, gathering the cities and strongholds under one consuming act.
ALSO GROWS
śərēp̄āh: burning; conflagration
שְׂרֵפָה
This noun from the same root names the consuming fire behind the verse’s action.
śārāp̄: fiery serpent; seraph
שָׂרָף
This related form carries the root’s fiery quality into a creature-name, showing the image extends beyond the verb “burn.”
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses fire to depict destruction that reaches through an entire place or order, leaving little intact.
And he burnt the house of the LORD, and the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burnt he with fire.Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.THE THREAD
And thou shalt gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the street thereof, and shalt burn with fire the city, and all the spoil thereof every whit, for the LORD thy God: and it shall be an heap for ever; it shall not be built again.The same Hebrew root שרף (saraph, “to burn”) appears in the command to burn a city and its spoil. Numbers names the cities and fortified places as consumed; Deuteronomy spells out the destruction’s reach to the city’s goods as well.
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