The BAN — a thing DEVOTED to God by being placed utterly beyond human use, which in war meant destroyed rather than plundered. From CHARAM, to shut off, seal away, consecrate irreversibly (the same root gives Arabic HARAM, 'forbidden/sacred'). It is the hardest concept in the conquest narratives: certain enemy cities are put under the CHEREM, their goods and often their people not taken as spoil but wiped out as an offering God alone owns. Judges 1:17 has Judah and Simeon 'put Zephath to the ban' and rename it HORMAH — 'Destruction,' the same root — freezing the act into the map. ⚠️ This translation neither softens the word nor explains it away: it renders it as what it is and leaves the moral weight of it in the note, the same posture it takes on the numbers of the exodus and the flood. → first discussed at Judges 1:17