וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ הָעֵצִ֖ים לַגָּ֑פֶן לְכִי אַ֖תְּ מלוכי מָלְכִ֥י עָלֵֽינוּ
The trees said to the vine, Come you, and reign over us.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Judges 9:12
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Judges 9:12 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
The trees said to the vine, Come you, and reign over us.
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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
The trees said to the vine, Come you, and reign over us.
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King James Version Public Domain
Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
So the trees said to the vine, ‘Come, you reign over us.’
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
The trees said to the vine, Come you, and reign over us.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Then the trees said to the grapevine, ‘Come and reign over us.’
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
Then the trees said to the grapevine, ‘Come and reign over us.’
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King James Version Public Domain
Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And the trees said unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And the trees said unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
Then sayd the trees vnto the Vine, Come thou, and be king ouer vs.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
And the trees said to the vine: Come thou and reign over us.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
`And the trees say to the vine, Come thou, reign over us.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
And the trees say to the vine, Come, reign over us.
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
The trees said to the vine, 'Come and reign over us.'
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
So the trees said to the vine, ‘Come, you reign over us.’
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Darby Bible Public Domain
And the trees said to the vine, 'Come you, and reign over us.'
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
“The trees said to the vine, ‘Come and reign over us.’
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
Then said the trees to the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
Then the trees asked the grape vine, ‘You come and be our king.’
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Then the trees said to the vine, You come and be king over us.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And the trees said unto the vine: Come thou, and reign over us.
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
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
לַגָּ֑פֶן
gephen
H1612
“to/for the · vine”
Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute
- Appears 55× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Genesis 40:9
- Part of Speech
- Preposition + Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Both
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
vine, vine tree
- of Israel (figuratively)
- of stars fading at Jehovah's judgment (metaphorically)
- of prosperity
- וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ ʼâmar H559 “and · to say” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural
- הָעֵצִ֖ים ʻêts H6086 “the · trees” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Absolute
- לַגָּ֑פֶן gephen H1612 “to/for the · vine” Preposition, Determined + Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Absolute
- לְכִי yâlak H3212 “walk” Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular
- אַ֖תְּ ʼattâh H859 “you” Pronoun, Personal, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular
- מלוכי mâlak H4427 “reign” Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular
- מָלְכִ֥י mâlak H4427 “reign” Verb, Qal, Imperative, 2nd Person, Feminine, Singular
- עָלֵֽינוּ ʻal H5921 “upon · us” Preposition + Suffix, Personal, 1st Person, Common, 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 →
- 8
- words
- 7
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
לַגָּ֑פֶן vine H1612 occurs in 53 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 4 verbs
- 2 nouns
- 1 pronoun
- 1 preposition
Verb forms
- וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
- לְכִי Qal · Imperative
- מלוכי Qal · Imperative
- מָלְכִ֥י Qal · Imperative
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- מלוכי to reign H4427 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 12 words from the Hebrew and 11 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 8 Hebrew tokens and 12 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.
καί εἶπον ὁ ξύλον πρός ὁ ἄμπελος δεῦρο σύ βασιλεύω ἐπί ἐγώ
And the trees said to the vine, Come, reign over us.
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.
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Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)
וַאֲמָרוּ אִילָנַיָא לְגוּפְנָא אִיתָא אַתְּ מְלוֹכִי עֲלָנָא:
(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 8 words (7 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is gephen (“vine”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “vine” (gephen) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- Genesis 40:9 shares the word «vine» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “to reign” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
- 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?
- The verb «וַיֹּאמְר֥וּ» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
- Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 1 word in this verse.
- “to reign” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 7 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Judges 9:12 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.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — 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.
unfoldingWord translationNotes
Door43 World Missions Community
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
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.