What Does 1 Chronicles 11:19 Mean?
And he said, "Far be it from me, my God, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of these men who put their living souls in jeopardy? For at the risk of their living souls they brought it. Therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men."
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 said, My God forbid it me, that I should do this thing: shall I drink the blood of these men that have put their lives in jeopardy? for with the jeopardy of their lives they brought it. Therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mightiest.THE KEY
David recognizes the water as carrying the living selves risked to bring it.
THE MEANING
Something you receive can carry the danger bound up in its arrival. David sees the water through the endangered living selves who brought it, so drinking it would make their risk feel consumable; he refuses.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a gift is only an object, detached from whatever another person risked to bring it.
THE ROOT
נֶפֶשׁ
nephesh
GROWS FROM
נ־פ־שׁ
n-p-sh
The living self or person; נֶפֶשׁ names the living individual.
“living souls” in this verse is nephesh. English “lives” can sound like an abstract measure of survival; nephesh keeps the living people in view. David sees the water as inseparable from the people who placed their living selves in danger to bring it.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul, person, self.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the word used for the men’s lives at risk; it makes their peril personal rather than abstract.
naphash: To be refreshed or recover.
נָפַשׁ
The related verb is used for being refreshed in Exodus 23:12, connecting the living person with restoration and sharpening the cost of putting a life at risk.
THE PATTERN
A life placed at risk changes what receiving the resulting gift means.
But flesh in its living soul, its blood, you shall not eat.For he set his living soul in his hand, and struck down the Philistine, and the LORD worked a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it, and you rejoiced. Why then will you miss the mark against clean blood, to slay David for nothing?No one has greater love than this, that someone lay down his living soul for his friends.THE THREAD
For he set his living soul in his hand, and struck down the Philistine, and the LORD worked a great deliverance for all Israel. You saw it, and you rejoiced. Why then will you miss the mark against clean blood, to slay David for nothing?The Hebrew word for “life” here is nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ), the same word used for the men’s lives in 1 Chronicles 11:19. David has himself been described as putting his nephesh at risk; now he recognizes that same exposed life in the men who bring him water.
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