What Does 1 Chronicles 10:8 Mean?
And it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the pierced, that they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa.
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 it came to pass on the morrow, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, that they found Saul and his sons fallen in mount Gilboa.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “slain” shares its root with “pierce” and “profane,” making the stripping of the dead feel like a continuation of the wound.
THE MEANING
The scene lays out the morning after slaughter: the Philistines come to strip the slain, and Saul and his sons are found fallen on Gilboa. The dead remain exposed to the living and to the victors’ hands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Royal rank cannot shield a person from the aftermath of battlefield defeat.
THE ROOT
חֲלָלִים
chalalim
GROWS FROM
חלל
chalal
Pierce or wound; the wider word family also carries the sense of profaning or desecrating.
“pierced” in this verse is chalalim. The Hebrew noun translated “slain” grows from חלל (chalal), whose word family includes piercing or wounding and profaning. Here, the wound does not end with death: the enemy comes to strip the fallen, and the neighboring sense of desecration sharpens that aftermath.
ALSO GROWS
chalal: To pierce or wound.
חָלַל
It supplies the wound carried by the word translated “slain.”
chillel: To profane, desecrate, or make common.
חִלֵּל
This neighboring branch brings the violation of the dead into view as the victors strip them.
THE PATTERN
Violent death can continue into exposure, as the living handle, display, or deny burial to the dead.
And they cut off his head, and stripped off his armour, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to bring good news into the house of their idols, and among the people.They give the corpses of your servants as food for the fowls of the heavens; the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the earth.And from the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations they look upon their fallen bodies for three and a half days, and they do not release their fallen bodies to be laid in tombs.THE THREAD
The gazelle of Israel has been pierced upon your heights. How the mighty have fallen!“Slain” here grows from the same root, חלל (chalal), “to pierce or wound; to profane,” as the word for the slain in Chronicles. The lament holds the slain and the fallen together, letting grief name the same violent loss.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us