What Does 1 Chronicles 10:11 Mean?
And all of Jabesh-gilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul, and responded.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when all Jabesh-gilead heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul,THE KEY
In this verse, hearing is the moment another’s suffering enters a whole community’s awareness.
THE MEANING
You hear the full report of what has been done to Saul, and the knowledge reaches a whole community. The verse holds at that moment of hearing; its unfinished clause carries you toward the response that follows.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The idea that hearing leaves a person untouched is unsettled by what follows: the community rises to recover Saul’s and his sons’ bodies.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ
wayyishmeʿu
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, heed
“heard all that the Philistines had done to Saul, and responded” in this verse is wayyishmeʿu. The root שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear or heed) joins receiving sound with attending to it. Its branch שְׁמוּעָה (shemuʿah, report or news) shows how a report enters communal awareness; the next verse gives this hearing a response.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear, listen, heed
שְׁמַע
This familiar form shows how Hebrew hearing can carry attention and response within the same word.
shemuʿah: Report, news
שְׁמוּעָה
Jabesh-gilead hears a report about Saul; this related word names the news being received.
THE PATTERN
Hearing is a threshold: what is received calls for a response.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
They rose, every man of strength, and lifted the body of Saul and the bodies of his sons, and brought them to Jabesh, and buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days.Verse 11 ends with the community hearing; verse 12 begins with its men arising. The report is not left as knowledge: those who hear move to retrieve and bury the dead.
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