What Does 1 Kings 2:17 Mean?
And he said, Speak, please, to Solomon the king, for he will not turn your face away, that he give me Abishag the Shunammite as a wife.
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 said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon the king, (for he will not say thee nay,) that he give me Abishag the Shunammite to wife.THE KEY
The Hebrew hides a face turning away inside “say thee nay,” so the request arrives with Solomon’s refusal already ruled out.
THE MEANING
A plea can arrive with its expected answer already spoken: “he will not say thee nay.” The Hebrew pictures refusal as a face turned back, while the request asks that Abishag be “given” as a wife; confidence and transfer sit together in the same sentence. The request sounds settled before the person at its center has spoken.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a request is harmless because the person asked is expected to say yes.
THE ROOT
יָשִׁיב
yashiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
Turn back; return.
“turn your face away” in this verse is yashiv. The verse’s “say thee nay” is pictured in Hebrew as turning your face back. Refusal is not only a spoken answer; it is a turning away from the person asking.
ALSO GROWS
meshubah: Backsliding; turning away.
מְשׁוּבָה
This branch shows the same turning motion in the opposite direction from return: a person can turn away rather than toward.
teshuvah: Return; turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
The root holds both withdrawal and return, so the face turned away in refusal belongs to the same motion as turning back toward someone.
יִתֶּן
yitten
GROWS FROM
נָתַן
natan
Give; set or place.
“give” in this verse is yitten. The root carries the sense of setting or placing as well as giving. Here the request makes Abishag the one to be placed into a marriage, while the requester is the one who receives.
ALSO GROWS
nathun: Given; set or placed.
נָתוּן
This form makes the root’s sense of placement audible in the request for Abishag to be given as a wife.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
The gift branch exposes the transfer language inside a request about a person and a marriage.
שְׁלֹמֹה
Shelomoh
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
Be whole or complete; wholeness.
Solomon’s name carries the root of shalom, wholeness. Beside a request that positions Abishag within another person’s claim, that name adds a quiet tension between wholeness and an arrangement made over someone.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This familiar branch is the nature carried in Solomon’s name.
shalem: Whole; complete.
שָׁלֵם
The adjective gives the name’s root a quality of completeness that stands beside the request’s unresolved human stakes.
THE PATTERN
A plea is received or refused through the image of a face turned toward or away from the one asking.
For in your turning to the LORD, your brothers and your children shall be given compassion before those who take them captive, so that they shall come back into this land, for the LORD your God is of favor and compassion, and will not turn his face aside from you, if you turn back to him.Do not hide your face from me; do not turn your servant away in the burning of your anger. You are my help; do not drop me, and do not let go of me, O God of my deliverance.All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never throw out.THE THREAD
For in your turning to the LORD, your brothers and your children shall be given compassion before those who take them captive, so that they shall come back into this land, for the LORD your God is of favor and compassion, and will not turn his face aside from you, if you turn back to him.The same root that pictures Solomon refusing by turning a face back also appears in the promise that the LORD will not turn his face away. One root holds both motions: a face can turn away from a plea, or remain turned toward the one who returns.
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