What Does Numbers 31:11 Mean?
And they took all the spoil and all the prey, both of man and of beast.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “take” names both the soldiers’ act and their “prey,” placing people among the results of conquest.
THE MEANING
Conquest here becomes possession: the taking includes people as well as animals. The verse names that violence without separating human captives from the other captured life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that “spoil” means only movable goods falls away: the verse explicitly includes people among what is taken.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקְחוּ
vayyiqchu
GROWS FROM
לקח
to take, receive, or seize
“took / prey” in this verse is vayyiqchu. The opening verb “they took” and the noun “prey” both come from לקח. The verse names the taking and what that taking captures with the same root.
ALSO GROWS
laqach: to take, receive, seize
לָקַח
The opening verb וַיִּקְחוּ (vayyiqchu) is a form of this root.
leqach: teaching, learning
לֶקַח
This related noun shows the root can also describe what is taken in; here, “prey” makes the taking concrete and coercive.
malqoach: captives or captured prey
מַלְקוֹחַ
This is the verse’s word for “prey,” linking those captured directly to the act of taking.
הַשָּׁלָל
hashshalal
GROWS FROM
שלל
to plunder; plunder or booty taken from the defeated
“spoil” in this verse is hashshalal. This root draws the act of plundering and its result together. Beside לקח, it layers two aspects of capture: what is stripped away and who or what is seized.
ALSO GROWS
shalal: spoil, plunder, booty
שָׁלָל
This noun names what is carried off as spoil in the verse.
shalal: to plunder or seize as spoil
שָׁלַל
This verb makes the action behind the noun visible: spoil is what plundering produces.
THE PATTERN
Conquest places human beings and material goods within the same field of capture and possession.
And all their strength, and all their little ones, and their wives they took captive, and plundered even all that was in the house.But the women, the little ones, the cattle, and all that is in the city, all its plunder, you shall take for yourself; and you shall eat the plunder of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.THE THREAD
But the women, the little ones, the cattle, and all that is in the city, all its plunder, you shall take for yourself; and you shall eat the plunder of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.Numbers 31:11 uses לָקַח (laqach, “take”) in both “they took” and מַלְקוֹחַ (malqoach, “captured prey”); Deuteronomy 20:14 uses the same root in “shalt thou take,” beside שָׁלָל (shalal, “spoil”). The connection makes the scope explicit by naming women, little ones, cattle, and city goods.
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