What Does 1 Kings 13:29 Mean?
And the prophet lifted the corpse of the man of God, and laid it upon the donkey, and brought it back. And the old prophet came to the city to wail over him and to bury him.
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 prophet took up the carcase of the man of God, and laid it upon the ass, and brought it back: and the old prophet came to the city, to mourn and to bury him.THE KEY
Grief begins by carrying what it cannot restore.
THE MEANING
The prophet lifts the dead man’s body, carries him back, and gives grief a shape through mourning and burial. The body is not left where death found it; it is borne into care by someone still living.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that, once someone is dead, nothing remains to be done: the body still receives care, mourning, and burial.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשָּׂא
vayyissa from nāśāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
Lift, carry, bear.
“lifted” in this verse is vayyissa from nāśāʾ. Here the verb holds two actions together: the prophet moves the body and bears its weight. From the same root come מַשָּׂא (massa, burden or prophetic utterance) and נָשָׂא קוֹל (nasa qol, lift the voice or cry out), linking bodily weight, a borne message, and an outcry in one family of images.
ALSO GROWS
massa: Burden; also a prophetic utterance.
מַשָּׂא
The body is a literal weight the prophet carries; the same root names a burden that is borne as a message.
nasa qol: Lift the voice; cry out.
נָשָׂא קוֹל
The root can describe lifting a voice as well as a body, bringing the physical act of carrying close to the outcry of grief.
THE PATTERN
Grief gives the dead a bodily place through carrying, mourning, and burial.
And Sarah died in Kiriath-arba, which is Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Abraham came to wail for Sarah and to weep for her.And reverent men carried Stephen to his burial, and beat their breasts over him in great mourning.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.Isaiah uses the same root, נשא (nāśāʾ, to lift, carry, bear), for “borne.” Here the prophet carries a body; there, grief itself is borne, joining the weight of the dead with the weight of sorrow.
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