What Does 1 Kings 2:21 Mean?
And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother 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 she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife.THE KEY
The passive “be given” makes Abishag’s future sound transferable while concealing who would transfer it.
THE MEANING
The wording lets you hear how a request can turn a person’s future into something assigned by others: Abishag is the one to be given, while the giver stays unnamed. Adonijah’s name (אֲדֹנִיָּה, ʾĂḏōniyyāh, “YHWH is my Lord”) places a declaration of lordship beside a request that carries status. The next verse names the kingdom plainly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A marriage request is necessarily private and apolitical; the next verse makes the kingdom claim visible.
THE ROOT
יֻתַּן
yuttan
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, put, set, or place.
“Let ... be given” in this verse is yuttan. The Hebrew uses a passive form of נָתַן (natan, “to give or place”): Abishag is grammatically the recipient of someone else’s decision. The same root carries both giving and placing, so the phrase holds a transfer and an assignment of position together.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, put, or place.
נָתַן
The verse’s “be given” is a passive form of this verb, making the transfer clear while leaving the giver unnamed.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This branch shows the root’s familiar language of giving; here, that language is applied to a woman’s future and marriage.
THE PATTERN
The language of giving exposes whether a person is being transferred by someone else or chooses to give themselves.
And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her handmaid, the Egyptian, after Abram had settled ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as a wife.Husbands, love your wives, as the Anointed One also loved the assembly and handed himself over for her.THE THREAD
And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her handmaid, the Egyptian, after Abram had settled ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife.Both verses use נתן (natan, “give or place”) to describe a woman being assigned into marriage by someone else. The shared root makes the repeated structure visible: the woman is the one acted upon, while another person makes the arrangement.
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