What Does Numbers 31:9 Mean?
And the children of Israel took captive all the women of Midian, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods.
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 the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.THE KEY
The Hebrew distinguishes two acts of conquest: people are captured, while their wealth is plundered.
THE MEANING
Power appears here as the ability to seize both people and resources: women and children are captured, while herds and wealth are plundered. The verse names those seized through the victors’ actions, leaving their own voices absent. It keeps the human cost of victory in view alongside the material spoils.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that war’s harm stops with combatants is undone by the explicit inclusion of women and children among those captured.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁבּוּ
vayyishbu
GROWS FROM
שבה
sh-b-h
To take captive, to capture.
“captives” in this verse is vayyishbu. The Hebrew verb makes the captors’ action explicit: they capture the women and children. The same root names the act of taking a person’s freedom, not merely a status that follows the battle.
ALSO GROWS
shevi: Captivity.
שְׁבִי
It names the condition created by the act of capture in this verse.
shavuy: A captive person.
שָׁבוּי
It describes the people made captives by the verb used here.
בָּזָזוּ
bazazu
GROWS FROM
בזז
b-z-z
To plunder or seize as booty.
“spoil” in this verse is bazazu. The Hebrew verb marks the taking of the livestock and wealth as plunder. The verse uses a different action for material wealth than for people: the people are captured, while the goods are looted.
ALSO GROWS
bazaz: To plunder.
בָּזַז
This is the verb behind the verse’s description of the victors taking the material wealth.
bizzah: Spoil or booty.
בִּזָּה
This noun makes clear that what is taken becomes the victor’s plunder.
חֵילָם
cheilam
GROWS FROM
חיל
ḥ-y-l
Strength, force, military power, or wealth and resources, depending on context.
The word rendered “goods” belongs to a word-family that can also name strength, force, or an army. It can therefore suggest the wealth and resources that make up a people’s material strength, all of which are taken here.
ALSO GROWS
chayil: Strength, valor, wealth, or resources.
חַיִל
Its range makes the plundered “goods” more than a list of objects: they are also the people’s resources.
cheil: Army or military force.
חֵיל
This use of the same word-family links material wealth with the power and force that can be taken in conquest.
THE PATTERN
Conquering or commercial power can turn people into captives and possessions alongside material wealth.
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.And the Syrians had gone out in raiding bands, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she stood before Naaman's wife.And cinnamon, and fragrances, and incense, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and bodies, and living souls of humankind.THE THREAD
And the Syrians had gone out in raiding bands, and had brought away captive out of the land of Israel a little maid, and she stood before Naaman's wife.The verb for “captured” here comes from שָׁבָה (shavah, to take captive), the same root behind the little maid being “brought away captive” in 2 Kings 5:2. The shared root joins the women and children in this verse to one unnamed child: different scenes, the same word for the loss of freedom.
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