What Does 1 Kings 14:17 Mean?
And Jeroboam's wife rose and went away, and came to Tirzah. And when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died.
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 Jeroboam’s wife arose, and departed, and came to Tirzah: and when she came to the threshold of the door, the child died;THE KEY
Hebrew repeats the root בוא, “come/enter”: she comes to Tirzah, then in her coming to the threshold the boy dies, making the doorway the verse’s point of impact.
THE MEANING
The mother reaches the house, and the boy dies at that precise point. The boundary between outside and inside becomes where return meets irreversible grief; the verse lets that loss stand plainly.
THE ROOT
בוא
bôʾ
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
To come, enter, arrive.
“came” in this verse is bôʾ. The verse uses this root for her coming to Tirzah and again for “her coming” to the house threshold. That repetition makes arrival more than a backdrop: the exact moment of entering is where the loss becomes visible.
ALSO GROWS
bôʾ: To come or go in.
בּוֹא
The root holds arrival and entry together, fitting a scene where reaching the house also means crossing its threshold.
māḇōʾ: An entrance or entryway.
מָבוֹא
This branch makes the root’s spatial sense visible: the repeated coming brings her to the house’s point of entry.
THE PATTERN
At a boundary, a household or community confronts death at the point of entry or exit.
For the LORD will cross through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will leap over the opening, and will not give the ruiner leave to come into your houses to strike you.When he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried forth, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a great crowd out of the city was with her.THE THREAD
When he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried forth, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a great crowd out of the city was with her.Here another mother meets the death of her son at a boundary: he is carried out through the city gate as Jesus approaches. In 1 Kings the mother reaches the threshold as her child dies; Luke’s scene soon turns that encounter toward life (Luke 7:14–15).
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