וַיָּבֹ֨אוּ֙ אֶל אֲחֵיהֶ֔ם צָרְעָ֖ה וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹ֑ל וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ לָהֶ֛ם אֲחֵיהֶ֖ם מָ֥ה אַתֶּֽם
They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, What [say] you?
World English Bible · Public Domain
Judges 18:8
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Judges 18:8 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, What [say] you?
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, What [say] you?
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King James Version Public Domain
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
So they came to their brothers Zorah and Eshtaol. And their brothers said to them, “What you?”
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
They came to their brothers to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brothers said to them, What [say] you?
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
When the men returned to Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers asked them, “What did you find?”
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
When the men returned to Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers asked them, “What did you find?”
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King James Version Public Domain
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What `say' ye?
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
So they came againe vnto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren saide vnto them, What haue ye done?
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
And they returned to their brethren in Saraa and Esthaol, who asked them what they had done? to whom they answered:
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
And they come in unto their brethren, at Zorah and Eshtaol, and their brethren say to them, `What -- ye?'
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
And they come to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol, and their brothers say to them, “What [did] you [find]?”
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
They returned to their tribe in Zorah and Eshtaol. Their relatives asked them, “What is your report?”
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
So they came to their brothers Zorah and Eshtaol. And their brothers said to them, “What you?”
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And when they came to their brethren at Zorah and Esh'ta-ol, their brethren said to them, "What do you report?"
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
They came to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol; and their brothers asked them, “What do you say?”
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And they came to their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said to them, What say ye?
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
When the men returned to Zorah and Eshtaol, their relatives asked them, “What did you…?”
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
So they came back to their brothers in Zorah and Eshtaol, and their brothers said to them, What news have you?
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol; and their brethren said unto them: 'What say ye?'
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
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וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹ֑ל
ʼEshtâʼôl
H847
“and · Eshtaol”
Conjunction + Noun, Proper
- Appears 7× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Joshua 15:33
- Part of Speech
- Conjunction + Noun
- Type
- Proper
Full BDB Definition
Eshtaol = "entreaty"
- a Danite city located within Judah
- וַיָּבֹ֨אוּ֙ bôwʼ H935 “and · to enter” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- אֶל ʼêl H413 “to” Preposition
- אֲחֵיהֶ֔ם ʼâch H251 “brothers · their” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- צָרְעָ֖ה Tsorʻâh H6881 “Zorah” Noun, Proper
- וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹ֑ל ʼEshtâʼôl H847 “and · Eshtaol” Conjunction + Noun, Proper
- וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ ʼâmar H559 “and · to say” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- אֲחֵיהֶ֖ם ʼâch H251 “brothers · their” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- מָ֥ה mâh H4100 “what” Particle, Interrogative
- אַתֶּֽם ʼattâh H859 “you” Pronoun, Personal, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 10
- words
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹ֑ל Eshtaol H847 — appearing just 7 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
וְאֶשְׁתָּאֹ֑ל Eshtaol H847 occurs in 7 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 2 verbs
- 4 nouns
- 1 pronoun
- 2 prepositions
- 1 particle
Verb forms
- וַיָּבֹ֨אוּ֙ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- אֲחֵיהֶ֔ם brother H251 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 18 words from the Hebrew and 22 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
Cross-references
4Topical passages linked to Judges 18:8 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- Judges 18:2 The children of Dan sent of their family five men from their whole number, men of valor, from Zorah, and from Eshtaol, to spy out the land, and to search it; and they said to them, Go, search the land. They came to the hill-country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.
- Judges 18:11 There set forth from there of the family of the Danites, out of Zorah and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men girt with weapons of war.
- Judges 13:2 There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and didn't bear.
- Judges 16:31 Then his brothers and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burying-place of Manoah his father. He judged Israel twenty years.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
καί ἔρχομαι ὁ πέντε ἀνήρ πρός ὁ ἀδελφός αὐτός εἰς σαραα καί εσθαολ καί εἶπον ὁ ἀδελφός αὐτός τίς σύ καταἧμαι
And the five men came to their brethren to Saraa and Esthaol, and said to their brethren, Why sit you⌃ here idle?
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
On this verse, The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
וַאֲתוֹ לְוַת אֲחוּהוֹן צָרְעָה וְאֶשְׁתָּאוֹל וַאֲמַרוּ לְהוֹן אֲחוּהוֹן מָה אַתּוּן:
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Judges, in the Historical, opens this verse with 10 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼEshtâʼôl (“Eshtaol”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- The word ʼEshtâʼôl carries the sense “Eshtaol.” How does it shape the verse?
- How does Joshua 15:33, which shares the word «Eshtaol», read alongside this verse?
- What does the repetition of “brother” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
- The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
- «וַיָּבֹ֨אוּ֙» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
- Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- These translations choose different wording for 4 words in this verse.
- “brother” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Judges 18:8 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
Trapp's Complete Commentary
John Trapp
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Keil & Delitzsch
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch
Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)
Rashi
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)
Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.