Judges 21:20

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

They commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards,

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וַאֲרַבְתֶּ֥ם

ʼârab

H693

“and · to lie in wait”

Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural

Appears 41× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Deuteronomy 19:11

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 156

to lie in wait, ambush, lurk - (Qal) - to lie in wait - ambush (participle as subst) - (Piel) ambushers, liers-in-wait (plural participle) - (Hiphil) to lay an ambush

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 →

9: words
8: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וַאֲרַבְתֶּ֥ם to lie in wait H693 occurs in 39 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

5 verbs
3 nouns
1 particle

Verb forms

ויצו Piel · Sequential Imperfect
וַיְצַוּ֕וּ Piel · Sequential Imperfect
לֵאמֹ֑ר Qal · Infinitive Construct
לְכ֖וּ Qal · Imperative
וַאֲרַבְתֶּ֥ם Qal · Perfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

ויצו to command H6680 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 15 words from the Hebrew and 16 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.

In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 11 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

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.

Hebrew Judges 21:20 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

ויצו וַיְצַוּ֕וּ אֶת בְּנֵ֥י בִנְיָמִ֖ן לֵאמֹ֑ר לְכ֖וּ וַאֲרַבְתֶּ֥ם בַּכְּרָמִֽים

They commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards,

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Judges 21:20 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἐντέλλομαι ὁ υἱός βενιαμίν λέγω πορεύομαι ἐνεδρεύω ἐν ὁ ἀμπελών

And they charged the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards;

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

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.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וּפַקִידוּ יַת בְּנֵי בִנְיָמִין לְמֵימָר אֱזִילוּ וְתִכְמְנוּן בְּכַרְמַיָא:

(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.

Commentary

Notes on Judges 21:20 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

Jdg 21:20 Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards;

Ver. 20. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin.] Who should first have examined the commands of their superiors, before they had obeyed them. Obediemus Artridis honesta mandantibus, saith the tragedian {a}

{a} Eurip., in Iphig.

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.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) They commanded.—Rather, they gave notice. This is the keri or marginal reading of the Hebrew; the kethib, or written text, has the verb in the singular, in which case we must take it impersonally, “It was bidden,” and suppose that some leading personage—probably Phinehas, the impress of whose character and reminiscences is observable throughout—is the speaker.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin,.... The two hundred men of the tribe that wanted wives; they ordered them as follows, and which they spake with authority, being the elders of the congregation, Jdg 21:16.

saying, go and lie in wait in the vineyards; which might belong to Shiloh, or it may be to Lebonah, which perhaps is the same with Bethlaban, famous for its wine with the Misnic writers; who say (g) the second places for wine are Bethrimah and Bethlaban; and I suspect that Bethrimah is the same with Bethrimmon, near which was the rock Rimmon these men were in; now this being the time of year when the vintage was just over, the vines were full of branches and leaves, under which the men might the better hide themselves; and the grapes being gathered, there were no men in the vineyards, and so might lie in wait safely, and under cover.

(g) Misn. Menachot, c. 8. sect. 6.

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

The Kethibh ויצו in the singular may be explained on the ground that one of the elders spoke and gave the advice in the name of the others. חטף in Jdg 21:21 and Psa 10:9, to seize hold of, or carry off as prey = חתף.

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.)

unfoldingWord translationNotes

Door43 World Missions Community

each one of you should grab a wife ... go back to the land of Benjamin

It it understood that the Benjamites would take these women back to their own land with them. The full meaning of this statement can be made explicit. AT: "each one of you should seize one of the girls of Shiloh, and then take her back with you to the land of Benjamin to become your wife" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

Benjamin

vineyard

watch

Shiloh

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

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 9 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼârab (“to lie in wait”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “to lie in wait” (ʼârab) contribute to the verse as a whole?
How does Deuteronomy 19:11, which shares the word «to lie in wait», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to command” (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?
«ויצו» is a Piel Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 11 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 5 words in this verse.
“to command” occurs 2× in this single verse.
8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.