What Does 1 Kings 13:25 Mean?
And look, men passed by and saw the corpse thrown in the road, and the lion standing beside the corpse, and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet had settled.
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, behold, men passed by, and saw the carcase cast in the way, and the lion standing by the carcase: and they came and told it in the city where the old prophet dwelt.THE KEY
The lion’s strange stillness turns a roadside death into a sign the city hears about.
THE MEANING
The road holds a dead body and a lion standing beside it, and the men who see them carry the scene into the city as a report. You are shown how what is seen can become public through speech, even before its meaning is explained.
THE ROOT
נְבֵלָה
nevelah
GROWS FROM
נ־ב־ל
N-B-L
To wither, fade, or fall away.
“corpse” in this verse is nevelah. The word for the body is formed from the family of words for withering and falling away. The scene names the body by its fallen state, while the lion’s presence beside it makes that stillness part of what the passersby witness.
ALSO GROWS
navel: To wither or fade.
נָבֵל
This verb shares the root and gives the carcass a sense of life fallen away.
naval: A fool; one acting basely or without discernment.
נָבָל
This related form carries the root family into a collapse of discernment or dignity, widening the image beyond physical decay.
וַיְדַבְּרוּ
vayedabberu
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
D-B-R
To speak; the related noun can mean a word or matter.
“told” in this verse is vayedabberu. The Hebrew says they spoke in the city; this is the same word family as davar, “word” or “matter.” Their speech carries the scene itself from the road into the city.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The shared root links their report to the matter they have witnessed.
dibber: Spoke.
דִּבֵּר
This is the verb form behind “told”: what they saw becomes spoken and shared.
THE PATTERN
What is witnessed becomes public through the act of telling.
Then they said to one another, We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news, and we keep silent. If we wait until the morning light, crookedness will find us. So now come, and let us go and tell the king's house.And they turned back from the tomb, and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest.For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.THE THREAD
And he went and found his corpse thrown in the road, and the donkey and the lion standing beside the corpse. The lion had not eaten the corpse, nor torn the donkey.The Hebrew repeats נְבֵלָה (nevelah, “carcase”), then makes explicit that the lion has neither eaten the body nor torn the donkey. The stillness beside the body is not incidental: it is the striking evidence in the scene the men carry into the city.
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