What Does 1 Kings 10:3 Mean?
And Solomon told her all her words. Nothing was hidden from the king that he did not tell her.
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 Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.THE KEY
The repeated “told” makes wisdom an act of disclosure: every matter is brought into view until nothing remains hidden.
THE MEANING
Your questions can be spoken fully and met with answers that conceal nothing; wisdom appears as clarity without withholding. The verse pictures an exchange in which every matter brought forward receives an answer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wisdom must keep some answers obscure to preserve its authority; here, understanding is shown by what it makes known.
THE ROOT
הִגִּיד
higgid
GROWS FROM
נגד
To be in front or conspicuous; in this verb form, to make something known by setting it before someone.
“told” in this verse is higgid. The Hebrew repeats this verb: Solomon makes her matters known, and nothing hidden remains that he did not make known to her. Its sense of bringing something in front lets disclosure feel spatial: what was concealed is set where it can be seen.
ALSO GROWS
neged: In front of, or opposite.
נֶגֶד
The spatial sense suggests that telling brings a matter into view.
nagid: Leader or ruler.
נָגִיד
The word belongs to the same root family as “told”; here, royal authority is expressed through making matters known.
דְּבָרֶיהָ
devarēhā
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; in this word family, speech and the matter or thing spoken of.
The KJV calls these “questions,” while the Hebrew word carries the sense of her words or matters. The root holds speaking and the matters spoken within one family, so the answer reaches every concern she brings into speech.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
It links what she asks with the matters she brings before Solomon.
dibber: To speak or utter.
דִּבֵּר
It connects her spoken concerns to the act of answering them.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שלם
To be whole or complete.
Solomon’s name belongs to the same root family as shalom, wholeness. Beside the full telling in this verse, his name carries the language of completeness, with no matter left unanswered.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness or well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
It gives Solomon’s name its association with wholeness.
shalem: Whole or complete.
שָׁלֵם
It echoes the completeness of an answer that leaves nothing hidden.
THE PATTERN
Wisdom completes a question by bringing its matter into the open.
The weight of God is to hide a matter; the weight of kings is to search out a matter.The hidden things belong to the LORD our God, but the uncovered things belong to us and to our children for the ages, that we may do all the words of this instruction.For there is nothing hidden that will not be brought to light, nor has anything become hidden away, but that it come into the open.THE THREAD
She came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that carried spices, and very much gold, and weighty stones. When she came to Solomon, she spoke with him of all that was in her heart.The previous verse uses the same Hebrew root as “her questions” here: she speaks everything in her heart, and those spoken matters are what Solomon then makes known. The movement is from a question voiced fully to an answer that leaves nothing hidden.
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