What Does 1 Kings 11:14 Mean?
And the LORD raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite, who was of the royal seed in Edom.
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 LORD stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad the Edomite: he was of the king’s seed in Edom.THE KEY
The adversary does not merely appear against Solomon; the LORD causes opposition to stand.
THE MEANING
The verse presents opposition as something the LORD can raise into a person’s path, not merely a random disturbance. Hadad comes from a king’s seed, so what stands against Solomon carries its own inherited claim. The adversary is real, and the one who raises him remains the LORD.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that opposition is always random or beyond God’s reach; here the LORD raises the adversary.
THE ROOT
שָׂטָן
satan
GROWS FROM
שׂטן
To oppose or act as an adversary.
The Hebrew calls Hadad an adversary, a role rather than a uniquely named supernatural being. The same root names opposition as something a person can embody; here the LORD sets that opposition against Solomon.
ALSO GROWS
satan: An opponent or adversary.
שָׂטָן
This is the word used for Hadad, and it has no article here: he is an adversary set against Solomon.
sitnah: An accusation or act of hostility.
שִׂטְנָה
This branch shows how opposition can take the form of an accusation, making the adversary’s role wider than physical conflict.
וַיָּקֶם
wayyaqem
GROWS FROM
קום
To rise or stand; in this causative form, to make something rise or stand.
“raised up” in this verse is wayyaqem. What English calls “stirred up” is a causative form of qum: the LORD makes the adversary stand. The grammar gives the raising an agent, while “adversary” names the role of the one raised.
ALSO GROWS
qum: To rise or stand.
קוּם
The base verb reveals the movement beneath “stirred up”: something comes to its feet.
heqim: To raise, set up, or establish.
הֵקִים
This causative form shares the sense of making something stand, clarifying the active force of the verse’s wording.
maqom: A place or standing place.
מָקוֹם
This related word carries the sense of where something stands, echoing the adversary being set into a place of opposition.
זֶרַע
zera
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow; seed and offspring.
“royal seed” in this verse is zera. The word for seed also names offspring: what is sown continues as a line. Hadad’s opposition comes with a royal inheritance, not as an isolated presence.
ALSO GROWS
zara: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb shows the image beneath lineage: a line continues through what is sown.
zera: Seed, descendants, or offspring.
זֶרַע
This is the word behind “the king’s seed,” joining biological descent with the continuity of a royal claim.
THE PATTERN
Judgment can arrive through opposition raised into a person’s path or through release into consequences already moving within them.
And God raised up another adversary against him, Rezon the son of Eliadah, who had fled from his lord Hadadezer, king of Zobah.Woe, Assyria, the rod of the burning of my anger, and the staff in their hand is my seething.Therefore God gave them over in the cravings of their hearts into uncleanness, for their bodies to be made weightless among themselves.THE THREAD
But he turned and said to Peter, Go behind me, Adversary. You are a snare to me, for you do not savor the things of God, but those of humankind.The Hebrew שָׂטָן (satan, adversary) reappears in Greek as Σατανᾶ (Satanâ, adversary). In Matthew the word is spoken to Peter as he opposes Jesus’ path, revealing “adversary” as a role a person can occupy.
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