What Does Numbers 35:21 Mean in the King James?
Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him.
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 fatal blow becomes murder here through its enmity: the verse makes hostile intent part of what the act is.
THE MEANING
The verse names a death caused by a blow delivered in enmity as murder, even when the hand itself is the instrument. It states the consequence plainly: the blood-avenger is to kill the murderer when he meets him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that murder requires a weapon: a hand can carry lethal intent, and hostility makes the fatal blow murder.
THE ROOT
אֵיבָה
ʾēvāh
GROWS FROM
א־י־ב
to be hostile; to act as an enemy
The word for enmity shares its root with the word for enemy, so the verse names more than a passing feeling: it identifies the hostile relation shaping the blow. That intent is part of why this death is called murder.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōyēv: enemy
אוֹיֵב
This branch shows enmity as the condition of being an enemy, the hostility the verse identifies as the motive for the fatal blow.
ʾēvāh: enmity, hostility
אֵיבָה
This is the word in the verse: the hostile intent is named alongside the death and the judgment.
גֹּאֵל
gōʾēl
GROWS FROM
ג־א־ל
to reclaim or redeem as a kinsman
The blood-avenger’s title comes from the root used for reclaiming or redeeming as a kinsman. Here that kinship claim is attached to blood, and the verse states the resulting retaliation without softening it.
ALSO GROWS
gāʾal: to redeem, reclaim, or act as a kinsman
גָּאַל
This verb is the seed of the avenger’s title and reveals the kinship claim carried by his role.
geʾullāh: redemption or reclamation
גְּאֻלָּה
This noun shares the same root and shows that the title belongs to a wider family of words about reclaiming what is bound by kinship.
THE PATTERN
When enmity drives harm, scripture names hostility as part of the act rather than treating death as an isolated outcome.
But if any man hate his neighbour, and lie in wait for him, and rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he die, and fleeth into one of these cities:But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die.Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.THE THREAD
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.Genesis and Numbers use the same Hebrew word, אֵיבָה (ʾēvāh), for enmity. In Genesis it names the conflict between adversaries; here it identifies the hostility that makes a fatal blow murder.
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