What Does 1 Kings 11:3 Mean?
And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, and his wives bent his heart.
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 he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart.THE KEY
The heart is not removed when it turns; the root pictures it being bent toward another direction.
THE MEANING
What is held close can bend the heart’s direction; the inner person is susceptible to influence through its bonds. The heart remains present, but its orientation changes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what a person is closely attached to cannot alter the direction of the heart.
THE ROOT
וַיַּטּוּ
vayyattu
GROWS FROM
נטה
To stretch out or extend; by extension, to incline or turn aside.
“bent his heart” in this verse is vayyattu. The verb’s basic image is of something extended or bent, so the heart is pictured as redirected rather than replaced. The same root appears in a psalm’s request for the heart to be inclined toward God’s testimonies; English “turned away” can conceal that shared image of directional bending.
ALSO GROWS
natah: To stretch out, extend, incline, or turn aside.
נָטָה
This verb holds the physical image of extension together with the inward change of direction shown in the verse.
heṭ: Incline; turn toward.
הַט
This form appears in Psalm 119:36, where the heart is asked to incline toward God’s testimonies, showing the same root’s motion directed another way.
matteh: Staff or rod; also tribe.
מַטֶּה
Its concrete sense of an extended rod keeps the root’s image visible, while Kings applies that root’s motion to the heart.
THE PATTERN
What draws a person’s attachment shapes the heart’s direction.
Bend my heart toward your witnesses, and not toward plunder.For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.THE THREAD
Bend my heart toward your witnesses, and not toward plunder.The psalm uses the same root, נטה (natah), in הַט (heṭ), asking for the heart to be inclined toward God’s testimonies. In Kings, that same directional bending carries the heart away; the shared verb reveals the heart’s orientation as the point of action.
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