What Does 1 Chronicles 14:13 Mean?
And the Philistines spread out again in the valley.
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 Philistines yet again spread themselves abroad in the valley.THE KEY
“Spread themselves abroad” carries the Hebrew force of a raid: what returns is an incursion extending across the valley.
THE MEANING
Pressure can return across familiar ground and spread again; its recurrence is visible even after an earlier encounter. The return is real without erasing the fact that it has been faced before.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A threat that has receded is gone for good.
THE ROOT
לִפְשֹׁט
lifšōṭ
GROWS FROM
פשט
p-š-ṭ
To spread out or strip off; in this setting, to raid.
“spread out” in this verse is lifšōṭ. The verb פשט has biblical forms that describe spreading out, raiding, and stripping off. Here it carries the force of an incursion extending across territory, so the Philistines’ return is more than a gathering in the valley.
ALSO GROWS
vayyifšəṭū: They raided or invaded.
וַיִּפְשְׁטוּ
In 1 Samuel 27:8, this form of the same root is translated “invaded,” showing the root’s force in a raid.
vayyapšîṭū: They stripped off.
וַיַּפְשִׁיטוּ
Genesis 37:23 uses this form for removing Joseph’s garment, another action formed from the same root.
עֵמֶק
ʿēmeq
GROWS FROM
עמק
ʿ-m-q
To be deep.
The Hebrew word for valley grows from the root for depth. The setting is a low place between higher ground, giving the advancing force a concrete terrain to spread across.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāmōq: Deep.
עָמֹק
This adjective shares the root and makes the depth encoded in עֵמֶק explicit.
maʿămaqqîm: Depths.
מַעֲמַקִּים
This form appears in Psalm 130:1 and shows the root naming deep places as well as valleys.
THE PATTERN
An adversary can return to familiar ground after an earlier encounter, making recurrence part of the threat.
And it came to pass, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had spread out over the dry south and over Ziklag, and had struck Ziklag, and burned it with fire.And the Philistines went up again, and spread out in the valley of Rephaim.When the Slanderer had ended every testing, he stepped away from him until a fitting time.THE THREAD
And David went up, he and his men, and spread out against the Geshurites, the Gezrites, and the Amalekites, for they were those who settled the land from the ages, as you come to Shur, even to the land of Egypt.The verb translated “invaded” is the same פשט root rendered here as “spread themselves abroad.” That shared root lets the spreading carry the concrete sense of a raid into territory.
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