What Does 1 Kings 2:31 Mean?
And the king said to him, Do as he has said, and fall upon him, and bury him, that you may turn away the clean blood which Joab poured out, from me, and from the house of my father.
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 king said unto him, Do as he hath said, and fall upon him, and bury him; that thou mayest take away the innocent blood, which Joab shed, from me, and from the house of my father.THE KEY
The verse names a new killing as the means of lifting blood shed without cause from a royal house.
THE MEANING
Blood poured out without cause reaches beyond the hand that spills it: the king names himself and his father’s house as bearing it. He seeks to remove that burden through another killing. The verse keeps the violence visible inside its language of removal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that bloodshed burdens only the hand that spills it: the king names himself and his father’s house as bearing the blood.
THE ROOT
חִנָּם
ḥinnām
GROWS FROM
חנם
ḥ-n-m
For nothing, freely, without cause.
The phrase behind “innocent blood” is literally “bloods of ḥinnām”, blood poured out for nothing, without cause. The word makes the injustice concrete as gratuitous, while the sentence places its burden on the king and his father’s house.
ALSO GROWS
ḥinnām: Gratuitously, with no cause or provocation.
חִנָּם
Psalm 35:19 uses the same word for hatred without cause, echoing the verse’s sense of unjustly poured blood.
ḥinnām: For nothing, without payment.
חִנָּם
Genesis 29:15 uses the same word for work without compensation, showing its range from without cause to without price.
וַהֲסִירֹתָ
wa-hăsîrōtā
GROWS FROM
סור
sûr
Turn aside, depart, withdraw; in this causative form, remove or cause to depart.
“turn away” in this verse is wa-hăsîrōtā. Hebrew says the blood is removed “from upon” the king and his father’s house, treating bloodshed as a burden borne there. This act of removal is sought through a killing, keeping the violence inside the cleansing image.
ALSO GROWS
sûr: Turn aside or depart from a way or place.
סוּר
The base movement is away from a place or direction; here that movement is applied to blood resting upon a household.
hēsîr: Cause something to depart; remove it.
הֵסִיר
This causative form makes removal active, matching the stated aim of lifting the blood from the king and his father’s house.
THE PATTERN
Bloodshed reaches beyond the killer and leaves a burden on the land and community that outward disavowal cannot simply wash away.
So you shall not defile the land where you are, for blood defiles the land; and the land cannot be covered over for the blood poured out in it, except by the blood of the one who poured it out.They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they slaughtered to the idols of Canaan, and the land was stained with blood.When Pilate saw that he gained nothing, but that instead an uproar was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this aligned man. You see to it.THE THREAD
Your eye shall not spare him, but you shall burn out the innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you.This verse pairs innocent blood with its removal, naming Israel as the body from which the bloodguilt is put away. Its surrounding command states the violent remedy plainly, making explicit the cost compressed into the king’s order.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us