What Does 1 Chronicles 10:3 Mean?
And the battle grew heavy upon Saul, and the archers reached him, and he writhed before the archers.
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 the battle went sore against Saul, and the archers hit him, and he was wounded of the archers.THE KEY
The verse names the instant force crosses from battle into the body: arrows wound Saul.
THE MEANING
This verse gives you a plain measure of violence: battle presses upon a person, arrows find him, and bodily injury follows. The wound stays a wound; the text does not soften the force that causes it.
THE ROOT
וַיָּחֶל
wayyaḥel
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound.
“wounded” in this verse is wayyaḥel. The word carries the arrow’s penetration and the body’s injury in one root. Its other forms can name both the pierced person and the act of piercing, keeping the wound concrete rather than abstract.
ALSO GROWS
məḥōlāl: Pierced, wounded.
מְחֹלָל
Isaiah uses a form of the same root, so the force of piercing remains audible in another scene.
ḥālāl: A wounded or slain person.
חָלָל
The root can name the person marked by the blow as well as the wounding itself.
הַמּוֹרִים
hammorim
GROWS FROM
ירה
y-r-h
To shoot or cast; related forms also carry the sense of directing or instructing.
The word for archers belongs to the same root family as words for instruction and a teacher. Here the root’s physical sense is plain: the arrows are directed toward Saul and reach him.
ALSO GROWS
tôrāh: Instruction.
תּוֹרָה
This related form makes the root’s directing sense visible beside the literal shooting in the verse.
mōreh: One who teaches or directs.
מוֹרֶה
The archers’ word shares this root family, joining shooting and directing in the Hebrew vocabulary.
שָׁאוּל
Sha'ul
GROWS FROM
שאל
sh-ʾ-l
To ask or request; Sha’ul means “asked for.”
Saul’s name carries the meaning “asked for.” The verse keeps that name attached to a wounded body, without presenting the injury as an answer or a moral verdict.
ALSO GROWS
sha'al: To ask or request.
שָׁאַל
This verb gives the name Saul its root sense of being asked for.
she'elah: A request or thing asked for.
שְׁאֵלָה
This related noun makes the asking within Saul’s name more visible.
THE PATTERN
When violence overwhelms a person, Scripture names its physical force through arrows, wounds, and the body left exposed.
For your arrows sink into me, and your hand comes down upon me heavily.From the sole of the foot to the head there is no unbroken place in it, but wounds, welts, and fresh blows. They have not been closed, nor bound up, nor softened with oil.And Jesus took it up and said, A certain man was stepping down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who stripped him of his clothing and laid blows on him, and went away, leaving him half dead.THE THREAD
But he was pierced for our rebellion, and crushed for our crookedness. The straightening that made us whole was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.The Hebrew word מְחֹלָל (məḥōlāl, pierced or wounded) here comes from חלל (ḥ-l-l), the same root as Saul’s wound. In Saul’s scene arrows cause the piercing; Isaiah uses that same wound-language in a different scene, keeping the body’s injury audible.
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