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O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.
Genesis 49:6 — KJV
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Genesis 49:6
King James Version (KJV)
“In our prayers we talk to God, in our Bible study God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.”
— D.L. Moody
Genesis 49:6
Verse 6 of 33
Commentary
Commentary on Genesis 49:6
Theological / DevotionalThey slew a man. Here, “man” is a collective term for the plural “men.” The singular form is used indiscriminately throughout the Hebrew OT for both the singular and the plural.
Digged down a wall. Literally, “they hamstring an ox.” The singular “ox” stands for the practically unused plural “oxen,” found but once in the Bible (Hosea 12:11), and corresponds to “man” in the first line of the parallelism. To hamstring an animal is to render it lame by cutting its tendons (see Joshua 11:6, 9; 2 Sam. 8:4). In Gen. 34:28 it is merely stated that the cattle of the Shechemites were carried off, not that they were lamed. However, since the sons of Jacob were more concerned about revenge than booty, they probably mutilated some animals as well. Jacob mentions only the former, because it was this which most strikingly displayed their brutality. This trait disqualified them for leadership.
By SdaBc