Bible Strands
Judges 18:8
When the men returned to Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers asked them, “What did you find?”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The five scouts return to Zorah and Eshtaol, where their brothers ask them what they found. This exchange follows the scouts' observation of Laish's security and material abundance.
The words — אֲחֵי/הֶם ('a.chei./Hem) means "their brothers," and מָ֥ה (mah) translates literally to "what?" The text records a direct familial inquiry rather than a formal or elder-led interrogation.
The thread — Zorah and Eshtaol reappear in Judges 18:2 as the origin of the five spies and in Judges 18:11 as the departure point for six hundred armed Danites. Judges 13:2 also identifies Zorah as the hometown of Manoah from the Danite clan.
Why it lands — The verse establishes a kinship-based reporting mechanism that precedes the tribe's military mobilization. It requires the reader to track how a simple question bridges reconnaissance and collective action.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And they came unto their brethren to Zorah and Eshtaol: and their brethren said unto them, What say ye?
Cross-references
- Judges 18:2 So the Danites sent out five men from their clans, men of valor from Zorah and Eshtaol, to spy out the land and explore it. “Go and explore the land,” they told them. The men entered the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah, where they spent the night.
- Judges 18:11 So six hundred Danites departed from Zorah and Eshtaol, armed with weapons of war.
- Judges 13:2 Now there was a man from Zorah named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, whose wife was barren and had no children.
- Judges 16:31 Then Samson’s brothers and his father’s family came down, carried him back, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. And he had judged Israel twenty years.