The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Othniel
Judges 3:7–11 — Othniel. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
7So the Israelites did evil in the sight of the LORD; they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇə·nê- yiś·rā·’êl ’eṯ- way·ya·‘ă·śū hā·ra‘ bə·‘ê·nê Yah·weh way·yiš·kə·ḥū ’eṯ- Yah·weh ’ĕ·lō·hê·hem way·ya·‘aḇ·ḏū ’eṯ- hab·bə·‘ā·lîm wə·’eṯ- hā·’ă·šê·rō·wṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-they-did the-sons-of-Israel the-evil in-the-eyes-of YHWH, and-they-forgot YHWH their-God, and-they-served the-Baals and-the-Asheroth.”
Where the English smooths the original
and forgot the Lord their God; as if they had never heard of him, or known him, their Maker and Preserver, who had done so many great and good things for them
Asherah is from a root which means upright (like Orthia or Orthosia, a designation of Artemis, Herod. iv. 87), and her images are generally mentioned in connection with altars and images of Baal
ashçrah which denotes a wooden pole planted ( Deuteronomy 16:21 ), or set up ( 2 Kings 17:10 ), beside an altar, and venerated as a sacred symbolCambridge writes from the archaeology available in the 1880s; its account of the cult object is well grounded, but its confidence about what the word never means should be held loosely.
The friendship of the world is more fatal than its enmity; the latter can only kill the body, but the former murders many precious souls.Henry's note is on 3:1–7 as a block, so the sentence is his reading of the intermarriage preceding this verse, not a gloss on the Asheroth.
8Then the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He sold them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram-naharaim, and the Israelites served him eight years.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
’ap̄ Yah·weh way·yi·ḥar- bə·yiś·rā·’êl way·yim·kə·rêm bə·yaḏ kū·šan riš·‘ā·ṯa·yim me·leḵ ’ă·ram na·hă·rā·yim ḇə·nê- yiś·rā·’êl ’eṯ- way·ya·‘aḇ·ḏū kū·šan riš·‘ā·ṯa·yim šə·mō·neh šā·nîm
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-burned the-nostril-of YHWH against-Israel, and-He-sold-them into-the-hand of-Cushan-Rishathaim king-of Aram-of-the-two-rivers; and-they-served, the-sons-of-Israel, Cushan-Rishathaim eight years.”
Where the English smooths the original
If the reading of all the MSS. be correct, this must be a term of hatred rather than a name, for it means “Cushan of the double wickedness.”
This lay at such a distance, that one would not have thought Israel’s trouble should have come from such a far country; but this shows so much the more that the hand of God was in it.
served Chushan-rishathaim eight years—by the payment of a stipulated tribute yearly, the raising of which must have caused a great amount of labor and privation.JFB infers tribute-payment as the form of the servitude; the Hebrew says only that they served him, so this is a reasonable reconstruction, not a stated fact.
The subjugation of the Israelite tribes by the king of this remote region is as surprising as his overthrow by the small clan of Othniel in the S. of Judah.Cambridge judges the narrative as it stands “most improbable” and reconstructs a Midianite raid behind it. We record the objection without adopting it: the difficulty it names is real, its proposed emendation of Aram to Edom is conjecture.
9But when the Israelites cried out to the LORD, He raised up Othniel son of Caleb’s younger brother Kenaz as a deliverer to save them.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ḇə·nê- yiś·rā·’êl way·yiz·‘ă·qū ’el- Yah·weh Yah·weh way·yā·qem ‘ā·ṯə·nî·’êl liḇ·nê ḵā·lêḇ haq·qā·ṭōn mim·men·nū ’ă·ḥî qə·naz mō·wō·šî·a‘ way·yō·wō·šî·‘êm ’êṯ ben- yiś·rā·’êl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-they-shrieked, the-sons-of-Israel, unto YHWH; and-raised-up YHWH a-saviour for-the-sons-of-Israel, and-he-saved-them: Othniel son-of Kenaz, brother-of Caleb, the-younger than-him.”
Where the English smooths the original
In this oppression the Israelites cried to the Lord for help, and He raised them up מושׁיע, a deliverer, helper, namely the Kenizzite Othniel, the younger brother and son-in-law of Caleb
But perhaps the least objectionable escape from the difficulty is to take the phrase in its most natural grammatical sense, but to understand the word brother in its wider and very common sense of kinsman or fellow-tribesman.
But affliction makes those cry to God who before would scarcely speak to him. God returned in mercy to them for their deliverance.
10The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he became Israel’s judge and went out to war. And the LORD delivered Cushan-rishathaim king of Aram into the hand of Othniel, who prevailed against him.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
rū·aḥ- Yah·weh wat·tə·hî ‘ā·lāw yiś·rā·’êl way·yiš·pōṭ ’eṯ- way·yê·ṣê lam·mil·ḥā·māh Yah·weh way·yit·tên riš·‘ā·ṯa·yim me·leḵ ’ă·rām bə·yā·ḏōw ’eṯ- kū·šan wat·tā·‘āz yā·ḏōw ‘al kū·šan riš·‘ā·ṯā·yim
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-was upon-him the-Spirit-of YHWH, and-he-judged Israel, and-he-went-out to-the-war; and-gave YHWH into-his-hand Cushan-Rishathaim king-of Aram, and-was-strong his-hand against Cushan-Rishathaim.”
Where the English smooths the original
called and directed by the Holy Spirit, who endued them with extraordinary wisdom, courage, and strength for the work which lay before them
He judged Israel, i.e. pleaded and avenged the cause of Israel against their oppressors
(e) He was stirred up by the Spirit of the Lord.The Geneva marginal gloss is a single sentence keyed to the letter (e) in its own text; it reads the Spirit's coming as the impulse behind Othniel's rising rather than as an endowment of office.
In the O.T. the spirit is not realized as a distinct personality; the spirit of Jehovah is Jehovah Himself in operation, and, as the divine name implies, in redemptive operation on behalf of Israel.Cambridge is describing what it judges the Old Testament writers themselves to have conceived, not settling Trinitarian doctrine. Its second clause — that the spirit of Jehovah is Jehovah Himself in redemptive operation — is stronger and more useful than its first.
11So the land had rest for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
hā·’ā·reṣ wat·tiš·qōṭ ’ar·bā·‘îm šā·nāh ‘ā·ṯə·nî·’êl ben- qə·naz way·yā·māṯ
Literal — word-for-word from the original
“And-the-land had-rest forty year; and-died Othniel son-of Kenaz.”
Where the English smooths the original
Forty years, here and elsewhere, is (like fourscore years, Judges 3:30 ) a round number, perhaps equivalent to a generation.
It rested about forty years, or the greatest part of forty years; it being most frequent in Scripture to use numbers in such a latitude.This is the first of two systems Poole offers; his second takes “forty years” as “in the fortieth year,” i.e. the point at which rest began. He does not finally decide between them, and neither do we.
not at the end of the forty years; it is not likely he should live so long, but when he died is not certain
The arrangement of this verse suggests that Othniel lived through the whole forty years of rest, but this is highly improbable.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The verse is built of three consecutive verbs and nothing else: they did, they forgot, they served. Ellicott insists the middle noun is definite — “Rather, did the evil, as in Judges 2:11” — so that the opening line of the judges-era proper is not a new charge but a re-filed one. Between the doing and the serving stands וַֽיִּשְׁכְּח֖וּ, from shâkach, “to mislay.” Cambridge routes that verb to Deuteronomy 6:12 and 8:11, where forgetting is precisely the sin predicted of a people once they are fed and settled; Gill presses the pastoral edge, that they forgot Him as if they had never heard of Him, their Maker and Preserver. ⚙ The order is the argument: apostasy here is not decided, it is lapsed into. On the objects of the new service, the sources diverge honestly. Barnes reads הָאֲשֵׁרֽוֹת׃ flatly as “images of Asherah”; Cambridge, marshalling Ḫammurabi's Ashratum, the Amarna name Abd-ashirta and the Taanach tablet, grants a real Canaanite goddess yet doubts the Old Testament usually means her; Ellicott, following Mövers, separates Asherah from Astarte; Poole takes the plural metonymically for the idols kept in the groves. Henry, commenting on the block 3:1–7, supplies the moral frame the narrative withholds: the friendship of the world is more fatal than its enmity.
Hebrew puts God's anger in His face: אַ֤ף is the nostril, וַיִּֽחַר־ is glowing warm. Then comes the verb that governs the theology of the unit — וַֽיִּמְכְּרֵ֗ם, from mâkar, the commercial word for selling merchandise or a daughter into slavery. JFB glosses it “delivered them,” and the softening is understandable, but the Hebrew is a transaction, and a sale presumes a seller who may yet redeem. ⚙ Note what the narrator does not need to say: the verb Israel chose in v. 7, ʻâbad, is the identical verb in the identical form here in v. 8. They served the Baals; they served Cushan-Rishathaim. Judgment in this book is very often nothing more than the granting of the chosen verb a harder object. The oppressor's name is the unit's largest uncertainty, and the ✦ voices do not conceal it: Ellicott calls it a term of hatred rather than a name, “Cushan of the double wickedness”; Gill stacks up five competing explanations from the Targum, the Talmud, Bedford, Hillerus and Kimchi; Cambridge suspects a scribal confusion of Aram with Edom and a Midianite raid underneath; Benson, unbothered, takes the sheer distance of Mesopotamia as evidence that the hand of God was in it.
וַיִּזְעֲק֤וּ is not prayer language. Zâʻaq is to shriek from anguish or danger, and the verse records no confession, no vow and no reform — only the noise and the answer. Benson supplies the repentance (“when they returned to him in repentance”) and JFB supplies the penitent confession; ⚙ we note that these are the commentators' inference, and that the Hebrew credits the cry with nothing but pain. Then every verb of initiative belongs to God: וַיָּ֨קֶם is Hiphil, He caused to stand a מוֹשִׁ֛יעַ — Ellicott: “Heb., moshia; LXX., ‘a saviour.’” K&D identifies him as the Kenizzite Othniel, younger brother and son-in-law of Caleb. That relation is the unit's second great difficulty, and the sources handle it with unusual candour: Ellicott reports Josephus quietly reclassifying Othniel as “a person of the tribe of Judah” to dodge the arithmetic, while Pulpit lays out three readings and lands on the widest sense of ʼâch — kinsman or fellow-tribesman, both men being Kenizzites — rather than force the chronology.
The formula is the quietest of the book's three: the Spirit was upon him (hâyâh), not rushed upon him as on Samson (14:6) nor clothed him as it clothed Gideon (6:34) — a distinction K&D draws out at length, tracing rûwach back to Genesis 1:2 and arguing that “Spirit of Jehovah” names the same Spirit specifically at work in the plan of salvation. The ancients disagreed about its content: Ellicott and Gill report the Targum's “spirit of prophecy,” K&D calls that erroneous, Kimchi reduces it to bravery for the war, and K&D answers that we may not split the Spirit's powers so neatly, since the judges had also to judge and to put down idolatry. Cambridge, more soberly, calls the spirit of Jehovah simply Jehovah Himself in redemptive operation on behalf of Israel. Barnes takes the office as the thing signified — these men were saviours called and directed by the Holy Spirit — and Poole reads וַיִּשְׁפֹּ֣ט as pleading and avenging Israel's cause. Both Henry and Gill notice the sequence: he judged first and marched second. ⚙ And the verse ends with a grammatical detail no translation preserves: וַתָּ֣עָז is feminine because its subject is יָד֔וֹ, his hand. Israel was sold into the hand of Cushan in v. 8; Cushan is given into his hand here; and then his hand grows strong. One noun, three positions, and the whole deliverance told as a change of custody.
Two clauses close the account, and the commentators agree only that the numbers are soft. Barnes calls forty a round number, perhaps a generation; Poole offers two complete systems and admits Scripture's latitude with numbers; Geneva's marginal note divides the forty as 32 under Joshua and 8 under Othniel; Ellicott lists the open questions and observes that no fewer than fifty schemes of judges-era chronology have been attempted; K&D, counting the same ledger, reaches 450 years and takes up Acts 13:20 against 1 Kings 6:1. ⚙ We record the disagreement rather than resolve it. What the Hebrew does say is more interesting than the arithmetic: the verb is shâqaṭ, to repose — quietness, and the lexicon marks it as usually figurative — not the covenant rest of Deuteronomy. And Cambridge identifies the clause as a recurring editorial formula (3:30; 5:31; 8:28), which is the quiet tragedy of the book: a peace phrased as a refrain is a peace that will be needed again. Gill will not even guarantee that Othniel lived out the forty years, and Pulpit argues the death-notice belongs with what follows, not with what precedes. Either way the last word of the unit is וַיָּ֖מָת.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested against the text. Judges 3:7–11 is the book's whole machine assembled in five verses, and its moving part is a single Hebrew verb. In v. 7 Israel served (ʻâbad) the Baals; in v. 8 Israel served Cushan-Rishathaim — the same root, the same stem, the same conjugated form. Judgment here does not import a foreign penalty; it lets a chosen verb find its true master. Between the two servings God sells them (mâkar), a word from the market, not the courtroom, and a sale is the one form of loss that leaves redemption grammatically available. So when the people simply shriek in v. 9 — no repentance recorded, no reform promised, only zâʻaq, the cry of anguish — the answer is not a negotiation but a gift: God causes a saviour to stand. Then the narrator strips the saviour of his own glory with surgical care. The Spirit merely was upon him. The LORD gave the enemy. And the final verb of the battle is feminine, because the thing that prevailed was a hand — a hand that had held nothing until it was filled. ⚙ Read this way, the unit's deepest sentence is its last: and Othniel son of Kenaz died. Forty years of quiet were bounded not by Israel's fidelity but by one man's lifespan, and shâqaṭ is only quietness, never the rest promised to the fathers. The pattern is therefore self-indicting. Every element works — the cry is heard, the Spirit comes, the hand grows strong, the land goes quiet — and the whole still fails, because a saviour who can die can only lend his people the length of his own life. That is not a flaw in the deliverance; it is the deliverance telling the truth about itself, and pointing past itself to a moshia‘ whose tenure death does not close.
⚙ A fallible editorial line, not Scripture: the rest lasted exactly as long as the man did, which is the whole argument of the book of Judges spoken once, quietly, in its first account.
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The deliverer of this unit is not introduced; he is recalled. Barnes notes he was already distinguished in Joshua's lifetime as a brave and successful leader (Joshua 15:16–17), and Gill identifies him as the man who took Debir and married Achsah (Judges 1:12–13) — now, he adds, very probably a man in years. The Verifier confirms the link lexically: Judges 3:9–11 shares with Judges 1:13, Joshua 15:17 and 1 Chronicles 4:13 the rare proper names עָתְנִיאֵל and קְנַז, and with the first two also כָּלֵב. Pulpit adds 1 Chronicles 27:15, where a Kenizzite Othniel's line still supplies a captain in David's army. ⚙ The dossier matters theologically: Israel's first judge is not a new kind of man but the last living fruit of Caleb's faith.
Judges 1:13 · Joshua 15:17 · 1 Chronicles 4:13 · 1 Chronicles 27:15
basis: Verifier-computed shared Strong's lexemes: H6274 ʻOthnîyʼêl (in 6 vv — rare), H7073 Qᵉnaz (in 11 vv — rare), H3612 Kâlêb (in 35 vv). The rarity of H6274 and H7073 makes this a genuine verbal identity of persons, not a thematic echo; it is not a quotation claim.
אֲרַם נַהֲרָיִם appears in only five verses of the Hebrew Bible, and the company it keeps is striking. It is the country Abraham's servant travels to for Rebekah (Genesis 24:10); the country from which Balaam was hired to curse Israel (Deuteronomy 23:4); the enemy hired with a thousand talents of silver against David (1 Chronicles 19:6); and the region named in the superscription of Psalm 60. Ellicott compares Cushan's invasion to those of Chedorlaomer and Amraphel and observes that no invader comes from the far east again until the close of the monarchy; Cambridge argues the dual ending -ayim may be the vocalizers' work and the original a plural, Aram-nahârim. ⚙ Whatever the geography, the canonical pattern holds: the same far river-country supplies Israel a bride, a hired curse, a hired army, and here an owner.
Genesis 24:10 · Deuteronomy 23:4 · 1 Chronicles 19:6 · Psalm 60:1
basis: Verifier-computed shared Strong's lexeme H763 ʼĂram Nahărayim (in 5 vv — very rare); 1 Chronicles 19:6 additionally shares H758 ʼĂrâm (in 128 vv). A rare shared lexeme, not a quotation.
The last verb of the battle, וַתָּ֣עָז (ʻâzaz, “to be stout”), is a relatively rare root, and it is joined in this verse to shâphaṭ, “to judge.” Both roots stand together again in Psalm 9:19 — “Arise, O LORD, let not man prevail; let the nations be judged in Your presence” — where the psalmist prays for exactly the pair of things the narrator reports as accomplished. Ecclesiastes 7:19 turns the same root inward: wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten rulers of a city. ⚙ Set beside each other, Judges records the answer, the Psalm supplies the petition, and Ecclesiastes relocates the strength from the arm to the mind — which is the very combination K&D refuses to let anyone separate when he insists the Spirit given to the judges was not bravery alone.
Psalm 9:19 · Ecclesiastes 7:19
basis: Verifier: Psalm 9:19 shares H5810 ʻâzaz (in 11 vv — rare) and H8199 shâphaṭ (in 182 vv — common); Ecclesiastes 7:19 shares H5810 ʻâzaz (in 11 vv). The rare lexeme carries the link; no quotation or dependence is claimed in either direction.
The name קְנַז belongs not only to Othniel's father but to a chief of Esau's line, recurring at Genesis 36:11, 36:15, 36:42 and 1 Chronicles 1:36, 1:53. The Verifier records the shared lexeme, and it is the same rare word. But the inference commonly drawn from it — that Caleb's house was of Edomite Kenizzite stock, absorbed into Judah — is an interpretive reconstruction, not a statement of any of these texts, and none of the ✦ voices in this unit asserts it. Cambridge, in a different connexion, does argue that Aram and Edom are “barely distinguishable in the ancient writing,” which shows how easily this territory invites conjecture. ⚙ We record the lexical fact and withhold the genealogy.
Genesis 36:11 · Genesis 36:15 · 1 Chronicles 1:36 · 1 Chronicles 1:53
basis: Verifier: shared Strong's lexeme H7073 Qᵉnaz (in 11 vv — rare). The lexeme is confirmed; what is flagged is the widely repeated inference of a common descent linking the Edomite Kenaz to Caleb's Kenizzites, which no text in this unit states and which the sourced commentary here does not support.
In the Antioch synagogue Paul narrates precisely this era in precisely this shape: God gave them judges until Samuel, then a king, then “of this man's seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus” (Acts 13:20–23). Two of the ✦ voices reach for that passage independently — K&D over the 450 years of Acts 13:20, Ellicott appending “Comp. Luke 1:69; Acts 13:23” to the word moshia‘. ⚙ The structural parallel is exact: a people in need, God raising up, a saviour given. What cannot be claimed is a verbal link, because the link crosses Testaments and languages — Paul's Greek sōtēr shares no Strong's number with Hebrew מוֹשִׁיעַ, and the Verifier can compute no lexical basis across that boundary. The connection is of pattern and of Paul's own narrative sequence, and that is how we tier it.
Acts 13:20-23 · Luke 1:69
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): no shared Strong's numbers are possible, so no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is the shared narrative pattern of judges raised up culminating in a Saviour, plus the fact that two sourced commentators in this unit (K&D on Acts 13:20, Ellicott on Acts 13:23) themselves make the cross-reference.
Nehemiah 9:27 summarizes the whole judges cycle in one sentence, and three of this unit's voices cite it at the same two words. Ellicott quotes it in full at “cried unto the Lord”; Pulpit sends the reader to it at “a deliverer. Hebrew, Saviour”; Barnes invokes it when he calls the judges saviours. ⚙ The pairing of the cry and the gift of saviours is the same pairing Judges 3:9 makes. We do not tier this verbally: no Verifier-computed lexeme basis was supplied for this pair in the candidate list, so the recorded basis is the convergent testimony of the commentators and the shared formula, not a computed lexical overlap.
Nehemiah 9:27 · Psalm 107:13
basis: No Verifier-computed lexeme basis was available for this pair, so the verbal tier is deliberately declined. Recorded basis: the shared cry-and-saviour formula, and the independent citation of Nehemiah 9:27 at this verse by Ellicott, Pulpit and Barnes (Ellicott likewise citing Psalm 107:13).
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
The word the narrator chooses for Othniel is מוֹשִׁ֛יעַ, a Hiphil participle of yâshaʻ (H3467), whose root sense is “to be open, wide or free” — salvation as room to breathe after constriction. Ellicott notes the LXX renders it simply “a saviour” and himself appends Luke 1:69 and Acts 13:23. Barnes states the classical reading outright: the judges, called and directed by the Holy Spirit and endued with extraordinary wisdom, courage and strength, were “in this respect types of Christ the ‘Judge of Israel’” (Micah 5:1). ⚙ The lexical thread is not decorative: from this same root comes the name Yehoshua — YHWH saves — and its later form borne by the one of whom it was said that He shall save His people from their sins. Note also what the grammar does. The saviour does not rise; he is caused to stand (Hiphil of qûwm), and the salvation he works is attributed in the very next verse to the LORD who gave the enemy into his hand. A biblical saviour is never a self-starting hero; he is God's own act wearing a name.
Acts 13:23 · Luke 1:69 · Micah 5:1 · Matthew 1:21
Judges 3:10 is the first time in the book that the Spirit of the LORD comes on a man, and the commentators immediately reach forward. Barnes lists Isaiah 11:2, Isaiah 61:1 and Matthew 12:18–21, and says of Christ that in Him the Spirit of the Lord God was “without measure.” K&D names the same Isaiah 11:2 catalogue — wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the fear of the LORD — as the Spirit's proper operations, and refuses to let anyone reduce the judges' endowment to courage alone, because they had also to judge and to put down idolatry. Ellicott records that the Targum read it as “the spirit of prophecy,” comparing Isaiah 61:1. ⚙ Set the texts side by side and the difference is as instructive as the likeness: on Othniel the Spirit was, temporarily and for a task; on the branch from Jesse's stem the Spirit rests, and in the Nazareth synagogue the one who reads Isaiah 61 says the Scripture is fulfilled in the hearing. The judges show what a Spirit-borne deliverer can do for forty years; Christ shows what one can do whose anointing does not lapse.
Isaiah 11:2 · Isaiah 61:1 · Luke 4:18 · Matthew 12:18-21
The land had shâqaṭ, quietness — and then Othniel died, and Judges 3:12 opens with Israel doing evil again. Poole, arguing his second chronological scheme, himself reaches for Hebrews 4:9 and the rest procured by Joshua; Pulpit reads the death-notice as the opening of the next apostasy rather than the close of this peace. ⚙ We extend that observation, and mark the extension as ours: the argument of Hebrews 3–4 is that Joshua's rest was not the final rest, since God later speaks of another day — and every one of the judges' truces is a smaller instance of the same insufficiency. Othniel is the best case the book will ever offer. He alone among the judges is recorded without a fault; the rabbinic tradition Ellicott passes on placed him highest of them all. And his best case still ends in a funeral that resets the cycle. The unit therefore preaches, by its own structure, a saviour whose priesthood does not pass because he continues forever, and a rest entered not by a hand made strong but by faith.
Hebrews 4:8-9 · Hebrews 7:23-25 · Judges 3:12
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
⚙ Honesty notes for this unit. Text and word order. The interlinear supplied in the brief aligns Hebrew words to their English glosses rather than to Hebrew reading order (in 3:7, for example, the object marker is indexed before the verb it follows). Our note keys use the supplied indices exactly; our literal renderings follow Hebrew syntax, which is why the two do not run in the same sequence. Cushan-Rishathaim. Nothing external is known. Barnes states plainly that neither history nor the cuneiform inscriptions tell us the political condition of Mesopotamia at this time. The name is variously explained as a Hebrew term of contempt (Ellicott, Cambridge), a compound naming two kingdoms (Bedford, via Gill), a corrupted place-name (Kimchi, via Gill), or an Arab-Scenite epithet from Habakkuk 3:7 (Hillerus, via Gill). Josephus calls him king of Assyria and shortens the name. We report the spread and decline to choose. Chronology. Genuinely unresolved. K&D's treatment is capped in our brief mid-argument; what survives shows him totalling 450 years and weighing Acts 13:20 against 1 Kings 6:1, and noting that fifty different calculations of the period have been counted. Ellicott, Poole, Geneva, Barnes and Gill each propose different accountings of the forty years. Nothing in our synthesis depends on any of them. Othniel's relation to Caleb. The Hebrew of 3:9 is ambiguous as to whether “the younger” modifies Othniel or Kenaz, and the plain reading strains the arithmetic. We follow Pulpit in preferring the wide sense of ʼâch, kinsman, and flag that this is a choice among readings, not a settled fact. Source character. Cambridge writes from a source-critical standpoint and judges this narrative “most improbable as it stands”; we have quoted it where its philology is valuable and noted where its conjecture exceeds its evidence. Ellicott's reference to “the judges in Hebrews 9:27” appears to be a misprint for Nehemiah 9:27, the verse he quotes two sentences earlier; we have not built anything on it. Layers. Everything marked ✦ is verbatim public-domain commentary, named. Everything marked ⚙ is this tool's fallible synthesis and is offered to be tested. Neither is the Word of God, which stands above both.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)