What Does 1 Kings 1:21 Mean?
And it shall be, when my lord the king lies down with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be those missing the mark.
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
Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be counted offenders.THE KEY
The son whose name carries wholeness (Shelomoh) may be branded with the word for missing and guilt (chattāʾîm).
THE MEANING
When the authority securing your place is about to disappear, your standing can become exposed, and you may be treated as guilty by whoever holds power next. The threat falls on both you and your child, though no particular offense is named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being assigned guilt in a change of power does not prove that the charge names what you have done.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאִים
ḥaṭṭāʾîm
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss or err, and thus to incur guilt.
“those missing the mark” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾîm. This root holds the image of missing together with the status of being guilty. Here no particular act is named; the danger is that Bathsheba and Solomon will be treated as the guilty ones.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or do wrong.
חָטָא
The verb shows the action beneath the label: missing or wrongdoing can become a charge attached to a person.
ḥēṭʾ: Missing or wrongdoing.
חֵטְא
This noun shares the same seed, connecting an act of missing with the condition of being named an offender.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete; to be at peace.
Solomon’s name belongs to the same root family as shalom, wholeness. The verse places that name beside chattāʾîm, the label of guilt: the one associated with wholeness is exposed to being marked as an offender.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being, peace.
שָׁלוֹם
It makes the wholeness carried in Solomon’s name audible beneath the English proper name.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch gives the name’s root its sense of completeness, sharpened by the threat that follows the king’s death.
THE PATTERN
When power is contested, accusation can turn a vulnerable person into a supposed offender.
And two men, sons of Belial, came in and settled before him, and the men of Belial bore witness against him, even against Naboth, before the people, saying, Naboth blessed God and the king. Then they brought him out of the city, and stoned him with stones, and he died.For we have found this man a plague, and a stirrer of uprisings among all the Jews throughout the inhabited earth, and one who stands at the front of the division of the Nazarenes.THE THREAD
And Reuben answered them, saying, Did I not speak to you, saying, Do not miss the mark against the child, and you did not hear and respond? Therefore, behold, his blood is also sought out.The Hebrew word translated sin against shares the חטא root with chattāʾîm, the word behind offenders here. Reuben names harm against a child as wrongdoing; Bathsheba fears that she and her son will instead bear the label of the guilty.
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