וַיֻּגַּ֖ד לַאֲבִימֶ֑לֶךְ כִּ֣י הִֽתְקַבְּצ֔וּ כָּֽל בַּעֲלֵ֖י מִֽגְדַּל שְׁכֶֽם
It was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Judges 9:47
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Judges 9:47 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
It was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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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
It was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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King James Version Public Domain
And it was told Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And it was reported to Abimelech that all of the lords of the tower of Shechem had assembled themselves.
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
It was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
And when Abimelech was told that all the leaders in the tower of Shechem were gathered there,
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
And when Abimelech was told that all the leaders in the tower of Shechem were gathered there,
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King James Version Public Domain
And it was told Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
And it was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
And it was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
And it was tolde Abimelech, that all the men of the towre of Shechem were gathered together.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Abimelech also hearing that the men of the tower of Sichem were gathered together,
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
and it is declared to Abimelech that all the masters of the tower of Shechem have gathered themselves together,
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
and it is declared to Abimelech that all the masters of the Tower of Shechem have gathered themselves together,
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
Abimelech was told that all the leaders had gathered together at the tower of Shechem.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
And it was reported to Abimelech that all of the lords of the tower of Shechem had assembled themselves.
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Darby Bible Public Domain
Abim'elech was told that all the people of the Tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
Abimelech was told that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
And it was told to Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of Shechem were assembled.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
When Abimelech found out that all the leaders in the tower of Shechem had gathered there,
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
And word was given to Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were there together.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
And it was told Abimelech that all the men of the tower of Shechem were gathered together.
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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מִֽגְדַּל
migdâl
H4026
“tower of”
Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct
- Appears 49× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Genesis 11:4
- Part of Speech
- Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Both
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Construct
Full BDB Definition
tower
- tower
- elevated stage, pulpit
- raised bed
- וַיֻּגַּ֖ד nâgad H5046 “and · to make known” Conjunction + Verb, Hophal, Sequential Imperfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- לַאֲבִימֶ֑לֶךְ ʼĂbîymelek H40 “to/for · Abimelech” Preposition + Noun, Proper
- כִּ֣י kîy H3588 “that” Conjunction
- הִֽתְקַבְּצ֔וּ qâbats H6908 “to gather” Verb, Hithpael, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural
- כָּֽל kôl H3605 “all of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- בַּעֲלֵ֖י baʻal H1167 “husbands of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Plural, Construct
- מִֽגְדַּל migdâl H4026 “tower of” Noun, Common, Both, Singular, Construct
- שְׁכֶֽם Shᵉkem H7927 “Shechem” Noun, Proper
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
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מִֽגְדַּל tower H4026 occurs in 44 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 2 verbs
- 5 nouns
- 1 conjunction
Verb forms
- וַיֻּגַּ֖ד Hophal · Sequential Imperfect
- הִֽתְקַבְּצ֔וּ Hithpael · Perfect
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 18 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 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.
καί ἀναἀγγέλλω ὁ αβιμελεχ ὅτι συνἄγω πᾶς ὁ ἀνήρ πύργος συχεμ
And it was reported to Abimelech, that all the men of the tower of Sychem were gathered together.
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)
וְאִתְחֲוָאָה לַאֲבִימֶלֶךְ אֲרֵי אִתְכַּנָשׁוּ כָּל יַתְבֵי מִגְדַל שְׁכֶם:
(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 (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is migdâl (“tower”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- How does “tower” (migdâl) shape what this verse is saying?
- Genesis 11:4 shares the word «tower» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- 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 «וַיֻּגַּ֖ד» is Hophal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
- Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and John Gill's Exposition read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 8 Hebrew ↔ 11 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Judges 9:47 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.
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.