This verse explains that the battle against the city of Shechem was intense and long. The word city occurs three times, emphasizing that this place and its inhabitants were completely destroyed.

And Abimelech fought against the city all that day: The Hebrew waw conjunction rendered And introduces the next event in the story, so it is an appropriate connector here. However, many versions prefer to omit it, moving the temporal phrase all that day to the beginning of this verse (New International Version, New Jerusalem Bible). Fought renders the Hebrew verb lacham meaning “battle” or “wage war” (see verse 1.1). Translators must find a word here that can describe continued fighting and not a single attack. Though the word city often refers to its inhabitants, here it probably also refers to its strongholds, walls, and other defenses. The phrase all that day means throughout the entire day, probably referring to the daylight hours.

He took the city, and killed the people that were in it: This sentence has a chiasmb in Hebrew to emphasize the total destruction of Shechem. It reads literally:

Quoted with permission from Zogbo, Lynell and Ogden, Graham S. A Handbook on Judges. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2019. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .